Update on tobacco

A few weeks ago I put up a lovely posting on shade tobacco grown in the Connecticut Valley. The only picture of the tobacco leaves I had were none. Today I was driving by the barns of one of our local tobacco growers and lo and behold there was the perfect opportunity to get some good photo's of Tobacco drying and wouldn't you know it, I didn't have my camera. We turned the car around and headed home and retrieved the camera.



This is a good photo of the shade tobacco after being sewn to the laths and hung in the barn to dry.











This photo represents the opposite side of the barn where part of the siding boards are pivioted and are pulled open for cross ventilation.

Shade Tobacco

One of the interesting sights as you travel about the back roads of our Connecticut Valley is the sight of acres and acres of white tents. These tents shade the valuable Shade Tobacco Crop. The Connecticut Valley is a major source of some of the world's finest wrapper leaves. This golden colored wrapper tobacco is highly regarded and praised by many cigar makers and connoisseurs. Connecticut Shade, which emanated from the Hazelwood strain of Cuban seed, is shade-grown under huge tents to protect the delicate leaf.






Also from this area is Connecticut Broad Leaf. Grown in the sun, this wrapper tobacco is coarser, darker and produces a sweeter taste. The Broadleaf tobacco is in front of the tobacco barn. Shade tobacco is used as the outermost layer of high-end cigar brands like Davidoff, Macanudo and Arturo Fuente . Renowned worldwide for producing the large, caramel-colored, smooth-veined leaf favored by high-end cigar makers, it sells itself.
The shade is required to protect the delicate leaves. One good leaf will only wrap about 4 cigars.


This is not a mechanized process for harvesting. The man on the right is ridding a bicycle mechanized conveyor belt and that is about as good as it gets. Harvesting the leaves often requires workers to crawl the rows on their hands and knees picking the leaves.



This picture is showing the crop at the end with only one more picking left on the leaves. Then the shade will be repaired and rolled up awaiting next year’s crops.

Like many Connecticut Valley kids, my wife worked tobacco in the summers starting when she turned 13. The days were hard, hot and dirty as she worked in the sheds sewing the tobacco on laths. The money was pretty good for a 13 year old. 65 cents per hour. Workers were brought in from Puerto Rico as migrants to work the crop in the summer. It is the state of Connecticut’s No. 1 agricultural export in dollars, bringing in more than $30 million a year, according to the federal Department of Agriculture. In MA it is 5th with $12 million in exports.

This photo shows a newly constructed tobacco barn and notice the boards pulled out on the sides. These siding boards are pulled out to allow the crop hanging inside to dry. The tobacco is picked in the fields, hung on trailers for transportation to the barns where they are sewn onto laths and hung in the barn. To view an old barn with leaves hanging just follow the hyperlink above