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Visited a cigar tobacco farm in full swing

jgohlke

jgohlke

My other hobby
Joined
Sep 15, 2004
Messages
991
Location
near Orlando, FL
Recently (mid-August) I visited a tobacco farm in the Connecticut River Valley that was in full production mode. They are currently working 7 days/week to get the crop out of the field and on it's way to becoming a cigar. They grow shade tobacco for Altadis for use primarily as cigar wrappers.

It was a long-weekend visit with family that just didn't leave any time for much else. I did get to spend about 1/2 day at the farm and I got the full tour.

When we rolled up, there were two groups of workers in the field. They work back-to-back in the fields, but staggered so they don't get in each others way. Here's a shot of the road into the field:

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They lay out these long strips of cloth between the rows of plants. Then they crawl way back in (the other end is sealed with netting) and pick the leaves. They only pick 3 leaves off each plant (the lowest 3) as the leaves grow in a group. They count the times they pick the leaves and on this day, it was the 2nd “trimmings”. The 3rd and 4th trimmings are the most valuable so they keep them separated during the processing at the farm. The leaves aren’t “graded” until they hit the Dominican Republic. By the 5th, 6th and later trimmings, the flowers have dropped stuff on the upper leaves leaving a mark (or rotting a hole) and the upper leaves aren’t as valuable.

Here are some plants after their 2nd trimming.
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Here’s a shot of the flowering part of the plant growing through the top of the netting.
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The leaves are picked and stacked in neat piles, face down on the cloth. Once a row is fully picked the cloth is pulled out and the piles of leaves are stacked in to plastic containers. All the leaf handling is done very deliberately and carefully.

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As the cloth is pulled out, it is rolled up.

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Here are the leaves carefully stacked in a plastic bin.

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Once the workers finish with one area, they are bussed to another field. This farm consists of about 200 acres total, but it is spread out around town in 40-60 acre plots.

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We heard they were spraying at one of the other fields, so we drove over to take a look. We caught the helicopter taking on water and chemicals.

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He took off and went right to work. I don’t think he ever got above the top of the barn.

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He zipped out over the field and came in for his first pass:

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It only takes him 7 minutes to spray a full load and then he has to stop and reload with water and chemicals. He provides spraying on contract with the farm on a “as needed” basis, so they call him whenever they notice a problem (blue mold).

The spraying only lasts for an hour or two, so I was lucky to see it and get some pictures. We headed back to the first farm. By the time we got back, the first batch of leaves was coming in out of the field. They “sew” the leaves together and hang them in the barn to dry. The sewing machines are very specialized machines used only for this purpose. Since the barns have no electricity they have to use a generator.

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A crew keeps at least 1 barn a head of the workers so there is no downtime. Once they fill a barn, the workers move immediately to the next barn where the generator and sewing stations are all setup and ready to go. Then the crew tears down the machines in the first barn and moves it to the next empty one, leapfrogging the sewing crew. It’s a pretty amazing operation.

Bins of leaves ready for sewing.

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The sewing machine uses string on a needle to pierce each leaf only once in the stem. The leaves are placed face-to-face, stem up in the machine. As each carrier comes around, the “seamstress” sticks two leaves, stem first into the carrier. This triggers the gripper mechanism which grabs the stems and runs a needle through both stems. This is done 22 times and then the group of leaves on a string is attached to a stick which is hung on the end of the table. The seamstress then starts on another string, picking the leaves up 2 at a time (one in each hand), leaves facing each other…While this is going the guys are patrolling the center of the barn for full strings.

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You can see her inserting the leaves, stem first, into the carrier:

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Here’s a rack of leaves being grabbed for hanging.

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The racks of leaves are hung in three levels in the barn, from just overhead where we walked to the top level (at the inside top of the barn). When then need to reach the top of the barn, they use 3 guys instead of one (a human ladder) and just hand them up.

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Hanging leaves.

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While the barn is full of workers, they leave the slats open for air flow.

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The day we were there it was warm and sunny out, but very nice in the barn. The leaves come in from the field with dew on them, so the drip just a bit. The whole place was a giant swamp cooler.

Once the barn is full and the workers have moved on, the crew has torn down and removed the sewing machines, another crew comes in and sets up the burners. These are propane burners staged for the drying phase. They are kind of hard to see, but mostly they are stacked on top of each other with the top one being inverted.

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Inside a barn with the burners going, it’s 98 degrees (ideally). They leave it like that for several days with the barn closed up tight. The burners may be turned off for a day or two and then relit as necessary. The leaves are dried until the main vein of the leaf is reduced to almost nothing. All the water must be removed from the leaf or it will rot from the inside out. It was very warm in here!

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A shot with no flash so you can see the flames.

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Once the leaves are thoroughly dried, brown and crackly, the barn is wrapped tightly and giant humidifiers blow heated, moist air into the building. Dry, the leaves cannot be handled, so this process adds moisture to the leaves giving them the feel of damp paper towels. Moisture added to the outside of the leaves doesn’t causing rotting.

I wasn’t able to get any pictures of this process because it hadn’t yet started. Once the leaves can be handled they are stacked and fermented. During this fermentation cycle they are turned several times. Once properly fermented, they are sorted and packaged for shipment to the DR. Once in the DR, they are graded and then the farm gets paid by grade for each pound of leaf.

I wasn’t there earlier in the year to see the planting in the greenhouses or the replanting once the sprouts get too big for the greenhouse. Still, with just the part I did see, it’s amazing that cigars don’t cost $50 each.
 
lurch said:
Thats amazing...Makes me wanna go home and partake in my new hobby....
Click to expand...

Actually me too! I just made purchase of my first cigar mold. I'll post photos later. This was an excellent post. Thank you so much for sharing.
 
Thanks Joe, very interesting photos, make one realize how much work just in getting the tobacco leave ready to be worked. Good explanation on what was going on. I never knew that the leaves were dried out to prevent mold like that. :thumbs:
 
Thanks for the pics and story. I would sure like to see that myself some day. I am growing tobacco here in AZ and will post some pics of my crop soon. Some is in the garden and others are growing in hydroponic tanks. It is doing great, just praying that we don't get a hail storm like ast year.
 
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