TOBACCO 



25 



CUTTING AND HOUSING. 



Do not be in a hurry to begin cutting your tobacco until it is ripe, and enough 

 fully and uniformly ripe to fill a barn. A thin butcher or shoe-knife, well- 

 sharpened, and wrapped with a soft cloth around the handle and extending an 

 inch along the blade, will do the work effectually and be easy to the hand. Try it. 

 Put knives into the hands of experienced cutters only, men who know rip© 

 tobacco, and will select plants uniform in color and texture, and will cut no other. 

 Have your sticks already in the field, and placed in piles convenient — sticking a 

 stick vertically in the ground over each pile that they may be more easily found 

 when wanted. Pine sticks, rived three-fourths of an inch by one and one-fourth, 

 inches, and four and one-half feet long, drawn smooth, are best. 



Cutting and sticking, as once the almost Invariable practice in the Southern Tobacco States, but Daw 

 •nly to be seen where the dark e^sport type is raised. The bright yellow and sweet filler types are now 

 Usually hung as above described and not permitted to touch the ground. 



Start together two cutters and one stick-holder-— the cutters carrying two 

 rows, and the stick-holder walking between them. The cutter takes hold of the 

 plant with his left hand at the top near where the knife enters the stalk; with his 

 right he splits the stalk down the centre (observing to guide the knife so as not 

 to sever the leaves) to within three inches of the point he inte'nds to sever the 

 stalk from the hill; and as the knife descends his left hand follows the slit or 

 opening, and when the plant is severed from the hill, by a dexterous movement 

 of the left hand the plant is straddled across the stick in the hands of the holder. 

 When the stick has received about six medium plants, if intended for brights, it 

 is ready to go to the barn, either carried by hand if near, or hauled on a wagon 

 if distant. If it is necessary to use the wagon, prepare a bed sixteen feet long 

 to hold three coops on piles, on which place tobacco as cut, and after placing 

 twenty-five or thirty sticks of cut tobacco on each coop, drive to the barn to be 

 unloaded. 



Tobacco suitable for brights is best handled in this way, as it is bruised less 

 than if handled by any other mode. Try it, planters, and know for yourselves. 

 Very heavy tobacco will break less if, after being cut by the above mode, the 



