The following outline shows the harvesting and curing methods of each of 
the kinds of tobacco; 
Harvesting method Curing method 
Kind Type Priming Stalk-cutting Flue Fire Air 
Flue- cured 11-14 x Be 
Fire-cured 21-23 x x 
Burley Syl x Xs 
Maryland 32 me x 
Dark air-cured 35-37 x x 
Cigar filler 41-44 > me 
Cigar filler 46 or x 
Cigar binder 51-55 x x 
Cigar wrapper 61-62 x x 
Perique 12 x x 
The three curing processes and the barns used for each are described sep- 
arately below. 
| Air-curing (burley, Maryland, dark air-cured, and cigar types) 
Type of barn. Barns used for air-curing tobacco are 30 to 40 feet wide 
and vary in length up to 300 feet. Boards on the outside of the barn may be 
either vertical or horizontal. About every third board is hung on hinges as a 
ventilator. Horizontal bottom ventilators are also provided along the entire 
length of the sides of the barn to admit air near the ground, and many _ barns 
have additional ventilators along the peak of the roof (figs. 16 and 18). 
The barn usually has driveways extending through it, with doors at each 
end large enough to allow a wagon or truck to pass through easily. The inte- 
rior consists of a framework carrying tier poles for supporting the laths on 
which the tobacco has been placed (fig. 17). The spaces between the poles are 
called tiers. Barns are built 3 to 4 tiers high. The first tier of poles is 
at least 9 feet from the ground, so that the tobacco on the bottom tier clears 
the ground by at least 3 feet. The other tiers are 4 or 5 feet apart. The 
tier poles are usually about 16 feet long, and stout enough to carry at least 
800 pounds. 
Air-curing operation. All of the tobaccos that are air-cured are har- 
vested by stalk-cutting, except shade-grown wrapper and Puerto Rican filler, 
which are harvested by priming. The surplus food supply that the leaf accumu- 
lates while ripening helps it to live for several days after being harvested. 
When this is exhausted, the leaf dies and is then nearly cured. We might say, 
therefore, that air-curing tobacco is forcing the leaves to go through a proc- 
ess of gradual starvation under proper conditions. 
The time required for completing the air-curing of stalk-cut tobacco var- 
ies, depending on weather conditions, from 5 to 8 weeks for the cigar types, 
and from 4 to 6 weeks for Burley, Maryland, and the dark air-cured types. 
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