Air-cured tobacco
Tobacco dried in open, ventilated barns without added heat. Burley, an air-cured type, was grown in southwestern Ontario for more than a century before flue-cured arrived.S1
Chapter 2 →See also Flue-cured tobacco
Glossary22 terms
Priming, tying, the Dutch clock Words of the tobacco country
The language of the farms, the kilns and the auction floor. Dotted words in the chapters link here.
Auction exchange
The building where growers’ tobacco was sold to buyers. Under the marketing board there were exchanges at Delhi, Tillsonburg and Aylmer.S10
Chapter 10 →See also Dutch clock, Marketing board
Basic Market Acreage
BMA: the name for quota under the marketing board. Each year a farm could grow a percentage of its quota, set by expected demand, to keep the crop from swamping the market.S10
Chapter 10 →See also Quota, Marketing board
Boat
The horse-drawn carrier that took freshly primed leaf out of the field.S37
Chapter 9 →See also Priming, Tier
Bulk kiln
A kiln that cures leaf packed loose in racks with forced air, instead of tied on laths. The Delhi station bought one from the United States in 1961 to test, the first in Canada.S1
Chapter 12 →See also Kiln
Curing
Drying the harvested leaf under control so it turns from green to gold. In a flue-cured kiln it took about a week, with the heat raised from about 90°F to 170°F, by one 1955 account.S35
Chapter 5 →See also Kiln, Flue-cured tobacco
Dutch clock
The auction clock at the exchanges. The price ticked down until a buyer pressed a button to bid; the grower then had half an hour to accept or reject it.S11
Chapter 10 →See also Auction exchange, Marketing board
Flue-cured tobacco
Tobacco cured with heat in closed kilns, using flues that carry hot air from a furnace. It produces a light, bright leaf used mainly in cigarettes, and it was the crop of the Norfolk belt.S1
Chapter 2 →See also Air-cured tobacco, Curing
Kiln
The tall, closed wooden building where the leaf was flue-cured. The Delhi station’s history describes kilns holding about 900 to 950 laths, heated by two coal-burning furnaces with flue pipes running below the leaf.S1
Chapter 6 →See also Lath, Bulk kiln, Pack barn
Lath
A stick about four feet long. Tiers strung bunches of green leaf on it, and the laths were hung in rows inside the kiln.S35
Chapter 5 →See also Tier, Kiln
Marketing board
The growers’ board, formed in 1957, that set each farm’s quota and ran the auction exchanges.S10
Chapter 10 →See also Quota, Auction exchange
New belt
The flue-cured district that grew up on the Norfolk sand plain from the 1920s, as against the old belt of Essex and Kent counties.S2S3
Chapter 2 →See also Old belt
Old belt
Essex and Kent counties, where Ontario’s tobacco was first grown on a large scale. Norfolk overtook them by 1931.S3
Chapter 2 →See also New belt
Pack barn
The barn where cured leaf was stored and prepared for market. The Delhi Tobacco Museum was built in the form of one in 1979.S6
Chapter 6 →See also Kiln
Primer
A field worker who did the priming. A 1960s primer remembered earning $14 a day, plus room and board.S34
Chapter 9 →See also Priming
Priming
Picking the ripe leaves from the stalk, two or three at a time, over several passes through the field during the harvest from mid-August to early October.S37
Chapter 5 →See also Primer, Boat
Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program
The federal program that brings seasonal farm workers to Canada. It began with Jamaica in 1966. Researchers have since studied its workers on tobacco farms near Delhi.S18S19
Sharecropping
Working a farm in return for a share of the crop. Early flue-cured growing in Norfolk ran on a system of shares with managers and tenant farmers.S3
Suckering
Removing the side shoots that grow from the stalk after topping, so the plant’s strength goes into its leaves.
Tier
The worker who tied bunches of leaf onto laths, ready to hang in the kiln.S35
Chapter 9 →See also Lath, Primer
Topping
Breaking off the flower head of the plant so its strength goes into the leaves.
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