Tobacco: Field, Barn, and Market

Long after burley tobacco had supplanted bright leaf, the barns used for flue-curing remained standing. Farmers Federation News from December 1945.

Two varieties of tobacco dominated distinct eras. Bright leaf tobacco was common between 1870 and 1920. Farmers dried bright leaf tobacco in barns that were sealed and heated. This flue-curing was not necessary for the variety of tobacco that farmers began adopting in the twenties.

Farmers could cure burley tobacco in unsealed barns. In some cases farmers adapted existing barns for this purpose. For example, removing the clay chinking that sealed up a log barn used for flue-curing would make it possible to cure burley in the renovated structure. Farmers might also adapt a livestock or dairy barn by adding latticing along the tops of the walls and a "Kentucky vent" along the bottom of the walls. Whether built along this design or adapted to it, this kind of burley barn functioned like a very large dehydrator: hot air escaping out of the latticing along the tops of the walls would pull air in through the vents along the bottom of the wall. Over time, this circulation of air would dry the burley tobacco and make it ready for transport to the market.  

For more information about tobacco barns, as well as an amazing database of barn photographs, navigate to the Appalachian Barn Alliance's Database.

Cured tobacco leaves being stripped from the stalk and sorted. Image from the McClure Photographs collection.

The Farmers Federation stressed the importance of carefully sorting tobacco into particular categories or "grades." 

The News also advertised and promoted the tobacco warehouses in the region, especially the Asheville Tobacco market. Farmers would haul their tobacco to these warehouses and sell their crop, often for cash.

The issues of the Farmers Federation News that focused on the tobacco market also included advertisements for how farmers might spend their profits, as well as reports tracking how the year's harvest compared to earlier years. As the items in the gallery below make clear, harvest records were repeatedly broken during the late thirties and early forties. 

The tobacco trade undermines the myth of Appalachia's "isolation." At least in western North Carolina, residents were not cut off from the rest of the world: tobacco connected rural North Carolinians to urban places and to a global trade system.