No. 4.] TOBACCO RAISING. L63 



barn, but we know that the fellow over across the road has 

 got it, for we have smelled it and he has smelled it ; but he 

 won't sa} r so, and when his tobacco comes down there is 

 going to be trouble. I saw something this year of drying 

 out barns with fire. We worked some years ago with a 

 system of hot-air Hues in our barn, to see if we couldn't dry 

 out the barns with warm air, and it proved ineffective. It 

 would hold the bottom tier, but it simply lifted the difficulty 

 one or two tiers, and there was the bad air around the 

 second and third tier. This year we were threatened with 

 pole-sweat ; we didn't have any, but we were threatened 

 with it, and I saw one man who saved his tobacco, that un- 

 doubtedly would have gone all to pieces, with a wood fire. 

 It was a long, two-hundred-foot barn. He went into the 

 barn and took out the first tier on the left-hand side, the 

 bottom tier and a little from the next tier above, and built 

 up a hard-wood fire there. Then on the next bent the other 

 side of the barn he did the same, and so alternately, first on 

 one side and then on the other side of the barn all through. 

 Then he lighted his fires. It was damp, muggy weather. 

 He had some open land around his whole barn, and he let 

 everything swing clear. It looked like a ham house. The 

 smoke was coming out through the shingles and evetything. 

 It looked like a mess, but he let those fires go with every- 

 thing open until the smoke had nearly gone, and this hard 

 wood was a bed of live coals. Then he closed everything 

 tight, and there Avas a tremendous amount of moisture, 

 everything almost dripped, because the heat had started the 

 water out of his leaf, and everything then of course was in 

 proper shape for pole-burn. After doing that for an hour 

 or two, he opened it up again, and the wind and the heat 

 made a tremendous circulation and swept the barn out 

 clean. He let it be an hour or more, and shut it up again 

 and gave it another steaming, squeezed the water out more, 

 and then opened it again, and in twelve hours his barn was 

 as sweet as a nut, and any present danger of pole-burn was 

 gone. They did the same thing, practically, in Tariffville. 

 They had the primed tobacco. Of course there was not the 

 same danger as with tobacco hung on the stalk, but they 



