Posted by kyplowboy on August 18, 2009 at 18:30:07 from (98.80.7.18):
In Reply to: Re: Just Curious? posted by James Howell on August 18, 2009 at 15:28:33:
It don't take too much to get it just from the field to what you see in the barn. That is burly, you have to cut it at the ground with a tobacco knife (looks like a hatchet with a real thin blade) then spike (or spear as they say in the hills to the east) it. A tobacco spike/spear is a metal cone looking thing, 4" to 6" long, with a 1.5" to 2" hollow base and real sharp point. It fits over the end of a tobacco stick. A stick is just that, 4' long stick, old ones are mostly split hickory, new ones are sawed popplar roughly .75"X1.5". The cut tobacco is picked up and you run the spike through the stalk about a foot from the bottom so the stalk will hang from the stick when hung in the barn. Burly is (most of the time here, depending on the weather) left spiked in the field for three days and then loaded on a wagon. This is a big diference in burley and dark, dark his early and up through most of September will "sunburn" and turn a nasty black color and have bitter taste if it is left cut in the hot sun in the heat of the day for more than two hours. This means with dark you have to cut a little, then spike and load it and get it to shade durring most of the day. If you wait till 3 pm or later it can stay out till about 10 the next morning. Once it is loaded on wagons it is taken to the barn to be unloaded. If flat bed wagons are used it has to be unloaded pretty quick. If scalffold wagons (made of oil field pipe and an old truck or car axial) are used it can stay loaded a few days before it starts to rot. when you get to a conventional barn like the one shown, there are "tiers" up in the barn for the sticks to hang on. These are most of the time rough cut oak some where between 2X6's and 2X12 depending on how long they are. (Some newer barns have 3 or even 4X6's and these are much nicer to stand on, real old barns and some newer ones built by people on a budget like my grandfather in the 90's are built with "poles" made from small straight trees cut off the creek bank.) The tiers are about 3' wide abpart and 3' to 6' apart high, depending on when the barn was built and the type of tobacco it was built for, dark tobacco is alot shorter than burley and tobacco has gotten bigger over the years so newer barns have teirs spaced farther apart as a rule. Depending on how tall the barn is and how many tiers it has one to 3 or even 4 people have to work in the barn. You have to stand with a foot on each tier with your feet spread 3' bend over and take sticks from who ever is on the ground handing up, pull the stick with tobacco on it up and hang the stick on the tiers. Sticks have to be spaced so that air can flow between them and the 5 or 6 stalks on each stick have to be spread out so air can flow between the stalks. Air cured hangs in the barn for 6 weeks or more before it is cured and ready to be taken down and the leave striped off the stalk. Fire cured works the same way exept when it gets in the barn you cover piles of oak or hickery saw mill slabs with wet saw dust and keep a real smokey fire going for about 4 weeks. It ends up smelling more like country ham than tobacco.
I can't load pics on the work puter, but if you will email me I can send you pics from my cell phone. You have shared enough pics on the site over the last while I owe you that much.
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