Annual N.C. State Fair tobacco looping/tying contest to be held Friday at 2 p.m. in Heritage Circle WHO/WHAT: A total of $500 in prize money is up for grabs in the annual N.C. State Fair tobacco looping/stringing contest. The contest typically draws more than a dozen teams of three competing for the fastest time and best strung stick of tobacco. Teams can register on site on the day of the competition. This marks the 21st year of curing tobacco in the wood burning barn during the State Fair. The tobacco used in the stringing contest is grown at the Oxford Research Station in Oxford. The Maple Hill Loopers are defending champs and have won or place second more than a dozen times in the competition’s history. WHEN/WHERE: Friday, Oct. 16, 2 p.m. in Heritage Circle BACKGROUND INFORMATION: EDITORS - This is a highly visual and multi-generational competition that makes for great video and dynamic photos. This contest celebrates the tradition of putting in a barn of tobacco, which was a late-summer, early-fall event in North Carolina. In the past, 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. Today, flue-cured tobacco is machine harvested cured in metal bulk barns heated with gas and is no longer hung on sticks. Each tobacco stick will be judged on stringing time and quality. Once the fire is lit around 5 p.m. Friday, 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. 23, 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. -30-1 | 