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Home > What's New > A Day in the Shade
A Day in the Shade
Posted: Tuesday, August 30, 2005
By Michael Moretti
On a recent trip to the Connecticut River Valley tobacco country, I got down in the dirt for a day as a field worker and found that after all these years, human hands still do most of the work.
Upon my early morning arrival, I was led to a field of Connecticut shade -- the seed native to Indonesia, which was brought over to North America and birthed Connecticut shade tobacco. With curious glances, the largely immigrant workforce there made room for me in a row of tobacco.
The fields of shade look different from fields of other crops due to the great white cloth tent-like coverings. The white cloth is synthetic, whereas the former coverings were cheesecloth. Propped up by wooden posts like a canopy, the cloth completely shelters the plants. It is partially translucent and allows sun to filter through without directly beating on the plants. It also guards against wind, disease and weather, although rain can drip through. The synthetic coverings are one of the few technological advances introduced in tobacco harvesting.
On this particular farm in Windsor, much of the tobacco goes to the popular Macanudo brand. The plot of land reserved for shade is divided into squares called bents, which measure about 33 square feet. One side of shade had been lifted up and tied, exposing the bounty within. I stepped inside. Rows of plants stood out bright green against the stark white backdrop. It was about 10:30 in the morning, and the leaves had begun to wilt on the stalk in the heat. My guides, Augusto and Ernest, advised that we get going. Wilting is part of the harvesting process, but it makes it harder to pull the plant off the stalk. Usually you don't want the plant to wilt until you are transporting it to the curing barns, whereby the soft texture will guard against breaking -- a cardinal sin on the growing fields in which a slight rip could destroy a potentially good wrapper leaf. When it comes to picking, a firm leaf will break more cleanly from the stalk, like a crisp piece of lettuce from a head.
The sultry interior of the white room formed by the cloth -- I couldn't resist the reference to the band Cream, although I think they were probably enjoying different plants when writing that song -- made it an intimate space in which to work. The noises from the nearby road outside were dulled and the smell of living matter was pungent like the scent of freshly cut grass. The shade plants stood about 10 feet high even though they were planted only about two months ago. Tobacco is one of the few plants other than weeds that grow so quickly and heartily.
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I walked on a runner of cloth placed between each row of plants. The runner is connected to an old rusty bicycle located at the edge of the field and the end of the row. The bike is equipped with a giant roll of cloth where a front wheel normally would be. The back wheel is propped up off the ground, and when the rider pedals, the cloth extending from the roll between the rows is retracted back to the bike. At one time, a worker pulled in the piece of cloth manually with a staff topped by a hook. The bike innovation was a mechanical improvement made about 15 years ago.
My first job of the day was to pick the leaves off the stalks in the rows and then place them back on the cloth to be reeled in by the bike like a horizontal dumb waiter. This method cuts down on damage by reducing the handling of the fragile leaves and streamlines the process by setting up an assembly line whereby one worker picks, a second pedals the bike and a third takes the stacks of tobacco off the cloth and puts them in bins, destined for the curing barns.
I wiped the sweat from my brow, adjusted my Yankees cap and bent down to start picking. Surprisingly enough, although I was in the country, in the middle of a farm and perspiring profusely, there weren't many insects inside the cloth, or maybe I didn't notice. We were picking the second priming of the stalk. The first had been picked earlier.
Priming tobacco is a bottom-up approach. The first priming is removing the set of leaves closest to the ground; and the second is the next pair, and so on. There are about eight primings in all for shade plants. Different breeds of tobacco have various numbers of leaves with varying sizes, hence varying primings. And some varieties, such as broadleaf, [Click here for a day in the broadleaf fields.] are hacked off with a hatchet -- a job that wasn't part of my itinerary.
I first went to grab the leaves from the stalk, but my guide (like a mother keeping a marauding kid from the cookie jar) quickly restrained my hand. Apparently, something about my approach looked dangerous. After a brief tutorial, I learned the correct method. I placed my four fingers inside the "V" formed by the stem of the leaf connecting to the stalk -- my pinky finger flush to the stalk. I then placed my thumb flush underneath the stem where it met the stalk. With a firm flick of my hand straight down, I snapped off the shiny green leaf. As I went along, I placed the leaves in stacks of four on the runner of cloth between the rows. The delicate leaves need to be handled with care. A misplaced forefinger or overanxious hand could easily leave a large hole, turning wrapper into binder or filler.
Because you are picking by priming, you have to be careful to pick the right leaves as you go. If you're on priming number two, the leaves above in priming number three are not yet ripe. But it is easy to get confused. After all, it is not as if each leaf is unique in appearance. I took my eye off of my work for a second and lost my place. My guide Ernest got me back on track by telling me to look for the sticky sap spot on the stalk to regain my position. The sap spot signals that the leaf has been freshly picked and that it's time to go on to the next stalk. Sap from the leaves clung to my fingers as I worked. A few twists and tears aside, things went along pretty smoothly though, and I was done with a bent soon.
This was only the beginning, and it was time for the next lesson. Read the full story about my experience in the harvest in the December issue of Cigar Aficionado magazine.
Photos by Marvi Lacar Also in Cigar News:
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