32 



PROFITABLE FARMING. 



sponging, as to catch and fix the yellow color. Tobacco cured with a slight green 

 color, which disappears before it is sent to market, is the fashionable color for 

 fancy stock. 



STRIPPING AND ASSORTING. 



Tobacco should never be stripped from the stalks except in pliable order, 

 and the leaves on every plant should be carefully assorted, and every grade tied 

 up separately. Usually there will be three grades of leaf, assorted with reference 

 to color and size, and two of lugs. Of leaf tie six to eight leaves in a bundle, and 

 of lugs eight to ten. As fast as you strip, either hang the " hands " on sticks— 

 twenty-five to each stick and hang up or bulk down in two layers, the heads of 

 bands or bundles facing outward. The latter mode is best, if you intend to seU 

 in winter order loose, on the warehouse floors. If bulked down watch frequently 

 to see that it does not heat. If the bulk becomes warm it must be broken up, 

 aired and rebulked, or hung up if too soft. It is safer always to hang tip as soon 

 as stripped, unless you design to sell soon, and strike down in *' safe-keeping 

 order" in spring or summer. It is considered in "safe order" when the leaf is 

 pliable, and the stem will crack half way down the tie. 



Tbla Illustrates the antiquated mode of stripping and tying tobacco, where the " head-man " assortedi 

 and women and children performed the work of tying the leaves in bundles or bands, out of doors. This 

 work is now much more carefully and nicely done in doors— usually in a stripping-room epeciaUy eou- 

 Btructed for the purpose, with glass windows to afford sufficient light to execute the work properly. 



don't spoil tobacco after it is cured. 



If the temperature is raised above 160 degrees — and for some tobacco above 

 150 — ^much of the vegetable oil is expelled, and therefore the " life " of the tobacco 

 killed and thereby seriously damaged in other respects — evolving and fixing in 

 *^e leaves ammonia and acids which bite the tongue and injure the' flavor. 



The unscientific planter may know nothing of the chemical constituents of 

 tobacco, or the rationale of the effects of heat in inducing a pale green color in 

 the leaf, or why heat and evaporation properly adjusted prevent oxidizing and 



