The tobacco barn, a type of functionally classified barn found in the USA, was once an essential ingredient in the process of air-curing tobacco. In the 21st century they are fast disappearing from the landscape in places where they were once ubiquitous. [1] The barns have declined with the tobacco industry in general, and U.S. States such as Maryland actively discourage tobacco farming. [1] When the US tobacco industry was at its height, tobacco barns were found everywhere the crop was grown. Tobacco barns were as unique as each area in which they were erected, and there is no one design that can be described as a tobacco barn.
The terminology "tobacco barn" has been used to describe myriad structures in the USA. Buildings used for strictly tobacco curing, buildings that have multiple agricultural uses, and dilapidated barns, among others, have all been called tobacco barns at one time or another. [2] In the Connecticut River Valley (Tobacco Valley) which extends through Connecticut, Massachusetts and up to Vermont, the curing "barns" are properly called "sheds" (tobacco sheds). The term "barn" is exclusively used to refer to structures that house livestock in this area (New England). When referring to any tobacco operation in this area, whether shade or broadleaf, the term "shed" is the proper term to use.
Though tobacco barn designs varied greatly there were elements that were found in many US tobacco barns. Design elements which were common include: gabled roofs, frame construction, and some system of ventilation. The venting can appear in different incarnations but commonly hinges would be attached to some of the cladding boards, so that they could be opened. [3] Often the venting system would be more elaborate, including a roof ventilation system. In addition, tobacco barns do cross over into other barn styles of their day. Some common types of barn designs integrated into tobacco barns include, English barns and bank barns. [3]
Each farmer has his favorite venting systems that are built not only for the winds but for efficiency. Right after the tobacco is hung, the vents are opened during the day in an effort to begin the important process of shedding water from the tobacco known as the curing of tobacco. Tobacco is often cured at specific temperatures and humidities, depending on where the tobacco is being cured, and also what the finished tobacco leaf is supposed to taste like. Cigar companies each have their own curing "recipes." Each leaf loses approximately eighty percent of its own weight by the time the curing process has successfully finished. In the first two weeks of the curing process, about an acre of hanging tobacco loses about five tons of water. [4]
The vents are used to slow the drying process down which allows for a critical chemical break down to occur, turning the leaf from green to yellow to brown. To maintain ideal curing temperatures over the course of the curing process, farmers not only rely on the vents but on heat. While charcoal fires have been replaced in many barns with propane heaters, both methods help reduce moisture. With all of the variables that can impact the curing process, it is no wonder that the unique design of the tobacco barn has remained constant as a time-tested method for drying tobacco. [4]
The interior framing would be set up in bents up ten feet, [3] but more often about four feet apart horizontally, [2] so that laths (also called "tobacco sticks") with tobacco attached to them could be hung for drying. [3] The tier poles were often supported by posts and cross beams, the space in between known as the "bents." The bents ranged in vertical spacing from 20 inches to five feet wide. The bent itself became an important earmarker in determining crop volume. Farmers would commonly refer to barn size in terms of bents and the rule of thumb was one bent will hang half an acre of tobacco. [2] In some areas, bents were called "rooms," even though this just defined a narrow and tall division of the inside of the barn by the tier poles. In North Carolina, for instance, bents were called rooms, and a typical barn for curing flue cured tobacco was four rooms in size.
U.S. states, such as Maryland, have sponsored programs which discourage the cultivation of tobacco. In 2001 Maryland's state-sponsored program offered cash payments as buyouts to tobacco farmers. [1] A majority of the farmers took the buyout, and hundreds of historic tobacco barns were rendered instantly obsolete. [1] As tobacco barns disappear, farmers have been forced to change their methods for curing the crop. In Kentucky, instead of curing tobacco attached to laths in vented tobacco barns as they once did, farmers are increasingly curing tobacco on "scaffolds" in the fields. [5] [6] The 1805 Tracy's Landing Tobacco House No. 2 located at Tracy's Landing, Maryland, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. [7]
Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus Nicotiana of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the chief commercial crop is N. tabacum. The more potent variant N. rustica is also used in some countries.
Hay is grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut and dried to be stored for use as animal fodder, either for large grazing animals raised as livestock, such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep, or for smaller domesticated animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs. Pigs can eat hay, but do not digest it as efficiently as herbivores do.
A barn is an agricultural building usually on farms and used for various purposes. In North America, a barn refers to structures that house livestock, including cattle and horses, as well as equipment and fodder, and often grain. As a result, the term barn is often qualified e.g. tobacco barn, dairy barn, cow house, sheep barn, potato barn. In the British Isles, the term barn is restricted mainly to storage structures for unthreshed cereals and fodder, the terms byre or shippon being applied to cow shelters, whereas horses are kept in buildings known as stables. In mainland Europe, however, barns were often part of integrated structures known as byre-dwellings. In addition, barns may be used for equipment storage, as a covered workplace, and for activities such as threshing.
A lath or slat is a thin, narrow strip of straight-grained wood used under roof shingles or tiles, on lath and plaster walls and ceilings to hold plaster, and in lattice and trellis work.
Perique is a type of tobacco from Saint James Parish, Louisiana, known for its strong, powerful, and fruity aroma. When the Acadians made their way into this region in 1776, the Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes were cultivating a variety of tobacco with a distinctive flavor. A farmer named Pierre Chenet is credited with first turning this local tobacco into what is now known as Perique in 1824 through the labor-intensive technique of pressure-fermentation. It is reported by authorities on tobacco that Perique is based on a variety of Red Burley leaf. The Tobacco Institute says perique has been shipped out of New Orleans for more than 250 years and is considered to be one of America's first export crops.
Latakia tobacco is a sun-dried and smoke-cured tobacco product. It originated in Syria and is named after its major port city of Latakia, though large production has permanently moved to Cyprus due to varying and compounding sociopolitical issues within Syrian borders. It is in the family of fire-cured tobaccos in which the leaves are dried(cured) over burning hard wood. what sets Latakia apart from other fire-cured tobaccos is the use of heavy volumes of smoke from both dried and live material from aromatic woods.
A functionally classified barn is a barn whose style is best classified by its function. Barns that do not fall into one of the broader categories of barn styles, such as English barns or crib barns, can best be classified by some combination of two factors, region and usage. Examples of barns classified by function occur worldwide and include apple barn, rice barn, potato barn, hop barn, tobacco barn, cattle barn, and the tractor barn. In addition, some barns incorporate their region into their style classification. Examples include the Wisconsin dairy barn, Pennsylvania bank barn, or the Midwest feeder barn.
The Northern Wisconsin Co-op Tobacco Pool Warehouse or Bekkedal Leaf Tobacco Warehouse is located at 504 East Decker Street Viroqua, Vernon County, Wisconsin USA. It was designed by the architects Parkinson & Dockendorff. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 14, 2003.
Agriculture in Ghana consists of a variety of agricultural products and is an established economic sector, providing employment on a formal and informal basis. It is represented by the Ministry of Food and Agriculture. Ghana produces a variety of crops in various climatic zones which range from dry savanna to wet forest which run in east–west bands across Ghana. Agricultural crops, including yams, grains, cocoa, oil palms, kola nuts, and timber, form the base of agriculture in Ghana's economy. In 2013 agriculture employed 53.6% of the total labor force in Ghana.
This article contains a list of tobacco cultivars and varieties, as well as unique preparations of the tobacco leaf involving particular methods of processing the plant.
The cultivation of tobacco usually takes place annually. The tobacco is germinated in cold frames or hotbeds and then transplanted to the field until it matures. It is grown in warm climates with rich, well-drained soil. About 4.2 million hectares of tobacco were under cultivation worldwide in 2000, yielding over seven million tonnes of tobacco.
In nearly all instances where tobacco is to be used for smoking or chewing, it is necessary to cure the tobacco directly after it is harvested. Tobacco curing is also known as color curing, because tobacco leaves are cured with the intention of changing their color and reducing their chlorophyll content.
The Smith Tobacco Barn is a flue-cured tobacco barn in Dillon County, South Carolina. It is on the east side of a dirt road, 0.25 mi (0.4 km) south of South Carolina State Highway 17-34, 0.5 mi (0.8 km) north of South Carolina State Highway 17-155, and about 1 mi (1.6 km) east of the intersection of South Carolina State Highway 17-22 and South Carolina State Highway 155. It was named to the National Register of Historic Places on December 4, 1984.
Plantation complexes were common on agricultural plantations in the Southern United States from the 17th into the 20th century. The complex included everything from the main residence down to the pens for livestock. Until the abolition of slavery, such plantations were generally self-sufficient settlements that relied on the forced labor of enslaved people.
The Native Tobacco Board, or NTB, was formed in Nyasaland in 1926 as a Government-sponsored body with the primary aim of controlling the production of tobacco by African smallholders and generating revenues for the government, and the secondary aim of increasing the volume and quality of tobacco exports. At the time of its formation, much of Nyasaland's tobacco was produced on European-owned estates, whose owners demanded protection against African tobacco production that might compete with their own, and against the possibility that profitable smallholder farming would draw cheap African labour away from their estates. From around 1940, the aim of the NTB was less about restricting African tobacco production and more about generating governmental revenues, supposedly for development but still involving the diversion of resources away from smallholder farming. In 1956, the activities, powers and duties of what had by then been renamed the African Tobacco Board were transferred to the Agricultural Production and Marketing Board, which had powers to buy smallholder surpluses of tobacco, maize, cotton and other crops, but whose producer prices continued to be biased against peasant producers.
Tobacco Kiln is a heritage-listed kiln at 12 Chisholm Trail, Oak Valley, City of Townsville, Queensland, Australia. It was built c. 1933 by Dick Moyes. It is also known as Flue Curing Barn. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 27 September 2002.
The E.A. Wildman & Co. Tobacco Warehouse is a historic commercial/industrial building at 34 Bridge Street in New Milford, Connecticut. Built in 1870, it is the oldest of the surviving tobacco warehouses in the town, which was a major tobacco processing center in the region. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. The building has most recently served as a hotel.
The Windsor Farms Historic District encompasses a large historically agricultural area and the historic town center of South Windsor, Connecticut. Its built environment extends mainly along Main Street, between Interstate 291 in the south and Strong Road in the north, with a diversity of architecture spanning three centuries. The district includes agricultural fields on both sides, many of which remain in tobacco cultivation. The district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
An outbuilding, sometimes called an accessory building or a dependency, is a building that is part of a residential or agricultural complex but detached from the main sleeping and eating areas. Outbuildings are generally used for some practical purpose, rather than decoration or purely for leisure. This article is limited to buildings that would typically serve one property, separate from community-scale structures such as gristmills, water towers, fire towers, or parish granaries. Outbuildings are typically detached from the main structure, so places like wine cellars, root cellars and cheese caves may or may not be termed outbuildings depending on their placement. A buttery, on the other hand, is never an outbuilding because by definition is it is integrated into the main structure.
A field barn is an outbuilding located in a field, some distance from farmer's residence or the main cluster of buildings that constitute a farmstead. Field barns were necessary when arable fields or valuable pastures were located some distance from a village or the residences of the agricultural workers who tended the fields. Rather than "commuting" back and forth to the field with livestock, tools, or harvests, the field barn allowed on-site storage, as well as providing shelter for herds during inclement weather or when pregnant cattle or sheep needed respite and a clean place to labor. Field barns were also used for the drying and curing of hay, which protected the nutritional content of the crop better than drying and curing in the field.