Water for the sand
Drought had held production back since the station’s early years. Irrigation systems became available in the early 1950s, and the Delhi station began formal irrigation research in 1953.1 By 1956 it had built a plastic-lined storage pond with the Ontario Agricultural College.1
Better kilns, fewer hands
From 1954 the station built kilns to study forced-air curing, working with tobacco companies and the Ontario Research Foundation.1 Over the following years Ontario developed its own low-profile, forced-air kilns, along with mechanical tying machines, kiln elevators and priming aids.1
Canada’s first bulk kiln
Bulk curing, which used high-volume forced air, was developed by researchers in North Carolina. In 1961 the Delhi station bought a commercial bulk kiln from the United States to test. It was the first in Canada.1
Bulk curing did away with tying leaves by hand onto thousands of laths. By the early 1980s about 40 percent of the kilns in Canada were bulk kilns, many of them designed locally.1
TodayWhat machines changed
Every machine that took over a job also changed who was needed at harvest, and how many. That shift ran alongside the changing workforce described in chapter 9.