Tobacco drying


Title
Tobacco drying
Description
Women are sorting and hanging tobacco leaves to dry. Date from negative sleeve.
Date
August 20, 1952
Original Format
negatives
Extent
12cm x 10cm
Local Identifier
0741-b4-ff-v4.f.27
Contributor(s)
Subject(s)
Spatial
Location of Original
East Carolina Manuscript Collection
Rights
Copyright held by East Carolina University. Permission to reuse this work is granted for all non-commercial purposes.
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-NC/1.0/
Permalink
https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/841
Preferred Citation
Cite this item
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Comments

Jack Sasser Jan 04 2012

I am looking for a tobacco curing stick holder, similar to the one in the picture for an art project. Do you know where I could purchase this? Where I could find one? Any info will be greatly appreciated. My email is Jackbnimble25@yahoo.comThank you.

Sylvia Watkins Jan 20 2011

I am From Frankln County, N.C and we "put in", or "barned" tobacco pretty much like this family is doing. One exception is, when the looper finshed a stick of tobacco, it was hung in racks on the side of the barn. It stayed there until noon time when the primers came in from the field. After a brief rest, they decided who was to hang the tobacco in the hot barn and who was to hand the sticks up to the hangers. Either was a hot,tiring job. The "barn hands" formed a line from the racks to the door of the barn and "passed" the sticks to the first man in the barn. He, in turn, lifted it up to the first hanger. Then it was passed up to the next man, and so on, until it reached the top. By the time they hung all the tobacco that had been processed, they had a half-filled barn. After this they went to the house for a hot well-balanced meal of butter beans, corn, irish potatoes, tomatoes, stringbeans, etc. Maybe a banana pudding and plates of hot biscuits with fresh churned butter, cold iced tea and platters of fried cornbread! They relaxed for about 45 minutes and then went back to the barn and hot fields and primed and looped enough tobacco to fill the barn. At the end of the day, the weary workers grabbed a bar of lye soap and a couple of tomatoes and cleaned their hands of the black tobacco gum and it's accompanying stain.

Entered by Admin Sep 28 2009

Also, the tobacco is "cured" in this barn. Heat at a temperature up to 190 F deg is used. At this time, wood or oil was used. The curing process took from five to seven days.

Entered by Admin Sep 28 2009

The woman in white dress is looping the green tobacco on a stick. Notice the empty tobacco trucks in the back ground. The tobacco would have been to the top or over the curtain. The woman in the dark dress in the forground is "handing" to the looper. The "curtain" is let down to get the tobacco at the bottom of the truck. The man in the back would have been the "stick toter". He would poke the stick to a person in the barn "hanging" (the tobacco sticks). The hanger would be in the top of the barn, straddling the "tier poles" seen in the picture of the man in the tobacco barn I sent earlier. It would take two people in tandem to reach the top of the barn. The person at the top would be around twenty-five feet off the ground.

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