Davie County Farmer Offers Advice, 1916

From the August, 1916, issue of The Southern Planter

Editor Southern Planter

I have been growing the weed for over 50 years. Soon after engaging in the work I decided that there were better dates than others for cutting tobacco off the hill. For many years I studied this theory until finally I was successful in locating a fact.

To explain: Tobacco has an oily substance which is rampant in the weed at intervals and if you happen to cut your tobacco when full of this oil, of course, it is bound to cure up nicely with a heavy body and be what we call “waxy.” Oil and water won’t mix and when the sap rises, as it does at intervals, it pushes the oil out at the pores of the leaves and if taken then the tobacco will be minus any oil and will cure up “chaffy” and be light and worthless.

It is very important that tobacco be cut when oil is in it. Some days those who work in tobacco will become waxed up with a gum, then other days they only get a little stained, this being on account of the varying conditions of tobacco through the oil and sap stages.

You have experienced cutting tobacco one week and have excellent luck and then when you cut a week or 10 days later, off the same piece of land and with riper tobacco, and have no luck at all with it.

--R.V. Davis, Davie County, N.C.