entirely in this way. Beginning at the bottom, two 

 to four leaves are picked from the stalk at a time. 

 Priming occurs at regular intervals to get all the 

 leaves at the right stage of ripeness. 



Flue-cured leaves are either attached to 

 wooden sticks for conventional curing barns or 

 placed in metal racks for "bulk" curing. String is 

 used to secure the leaves onto the 4 1 /2 foot (1.4 

 meters) wooden sticks. Mechanical stitching 

 machines have largely replaced the hand 

 operation in stringing tobacco. 



Cigar wrapper leaves are handled with great 

 care. They are strung onto 4 1 /2 foot (1.4 meters) 

 sticks by attaching a string at one end and 

 running a threaded needlethroughthebaseof the 

 leaves (arranged in pairs, back to back and front 

 to front) for the length of the stick (about 15 to 22 

 pairs), and fastening it at the other end. In the 

 Puerto Rican type, no sticks are used. The string 

 is sewn through the butt of each leaf (about 40 to 

 50 leaves to a string) and then tied to the barn 

 poles. 



(2) Stalk-cutting— Burley, Maryland, and fire 

 and dark air-cured, and most cigar leaf tobaccos 



During harvest burley tobacco is speared onto sticks. The Burley tobacco sticks line the field just before they are moved 

 sticks of tobacco will be hung in the barn for curing. to a curing barn. 



Maryland tobacco is shown as it is speared onto sticks. A farm worker primes cigar-wrapper tobacco. 



