In harvesting Hue cured fofcacco, 2 to 4 leaves are primed each week as tney .Tiar 



Crews of banders picking the leaves up in hands at 2 to 3 leaves and 

 handing them to stringers w/io loop the hands of tobacco to a stick. 



5 



bam will hold 600 to 800 sticks of to- 

 bacco which contain 60,000 to 80,000 

 leaves. A bam of tobacco has 7,000 to 

 8,000 pounds of water imbibed in the 

 tiny cells of the leaves. Therefore,the 

 main objective in curing tobacco is to 

 eliminate the excess water from the 

 leaves in such a way as to give the to- 

 bacco a bright golden color, and this 

 is done by the use of artificial heat. 



Artificial heat is supplied to tobac- 

 co bams in various ways. Some grow- 

 ers use the old conventional method of 

 stoking a wood fired furnace 24 hours 

 a day by hand. Other growers use au- 

 tomatic themiostatically controlled coal 

 and oil burning stokers, but in recent 

 years the trajority of the growers in 

 North Carolina have used manual con- 

 trolled oil burning units which vary 

 considerably with make, or brand name. 



The process of curing flue-cured to- 

 bacco is divided into three phases. 

 First is the yellowing period in which 

 the green color in the leaves is chang- 

 ed to a golden yellow color. The next 

 step is the color setting and leaf dry- 

 ing phase. Then comes the stem drying 

 phase. It usually takes 65 to 75 hours 

 to cure a bam of tobacco. 



After a bam of tobacco has been 

 cured, the doors are opened to allow 

 the bam to cool. Then the tobacco, 

 which is very porous, absorbs moisture 

 from the night air which brings it into 

 case or order, so that it can be remov- 

 ed from tlie bam without breaking and . 

 packed in a packhouse. 



Sorting for Market 



After curing, the tobacco is removed 

 from the curiing bam and stored in a 

 packhouse until all of the crop has 



ried to the curing bam where a crew ot 

 tv\o handers pick the leaves up in hands 

 of 2 to 3 leaves and hand them to a 

 stringer, who loops the hands of tobac- 

 co to a stick. The sticks of tobacco 

 are either piled or hung in racks, later 

 the sticks of tobacco are hung in the 

 curing bam which are 5 to 7 tiers high. 

 There are 100,000 to 150,000 leaves 

 in an acre of flue-cured tobacco, and 

 all of these leaves have to be handled 

 about 10 times during the harvest sea- 

 son. It usually takes 5 to 8 weeks to 

 harvest a crop of flue-cured tobacco. 



Curing Bright Tobacco 



The process of curing a bam of to- 

 bacco to a rich golden color requires 

 a skill which is developed only through 

 years of experience. An average size 



A rack full of tobacco ready to be placed in the curing barns in the background. 



