Up in Smoke

Get some water, it's on fire! Just kidding, there's no fire yet but this is tobacco. Missouri and Kentucky had quite a lot of it out in the fields. I had no idea what it looked like before the trip. It looks like huge leaves of lettuce (see detail at right). To harvest the plant they grab the base of the leaves and pull them off. They are then hung up to dry in barns for about three months before they are processed.

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