WHO/WHAT:
The annual N.C. State Fair tobacco looping/stringing contest features nearly a dozen teams of three competing for bragging rights and $500 in total prize money. or the contest, each tobacco stick will be judged on stringing time and quality.
This marks the 21st year of curing tobacco in the wood burning barn during the State Fair. The tobacco used in the contest and for curing is grown in Oxford at the Oxford Research Station .
WHEN/WHERE:
Friday, Oct. 17, 2 p.m. in Heritage Circle
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
EDITORS - This is a highly visual and multi-generational competition that makes for great video and engaging photos.
This contest celebrates the tradition of putting in a barn of tobacco, which was a late-summer, early-fall event in North Carolina. Flue-cured tobacco was hand harvested, and the leaves were looped or strung onto a tobacco stick and then hung on beams in the barn where heat from a steady fire turned the tobacco from green to a golden color. F
Today, flue-cured tobacco is cured in metal bulk barns heated with gas and is no longer hung on sticks.
Once the fire is lit, it will be tended to until the tobacco has cured. The cured tobacco will be taken off the stick and gathered on burlap sheets to be part of the Mock Tobacco Auction that will take place Friday, Oct. 24, in the Tobacco Pavilion in Heritage Circle. Retired tobacco auctioneers and buyers will showcase what a tobacco auction was like.
The event is sponsored by John Deere Boys Ice Cream.
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