Leaves on laths, six hours in the Ardennes: reserve a tobacco barn day in the Semois valley

How a leaf gets from field to rafter

Cutting happens in late summer, and what you see depends on the week. The leaf is threaded onto laths in the sorting shed, four or five to a lath, then carried out and hung in ranks under the roof of an open sided barn. After that the work is the slats: opened to a dry wind, closed against damp coming off the water, judged by hand and by smell rather than by any instrument. Green becomes yellow becomes brown over six to eight weeks. The grower walks you along the ranks explaining which lath is behind the rest and why, and how many families in the valley still bother.

Walking a valley that doubles back

The day covers about five kilometres on gravel lanes and one steep pull out of the valley to the point where the loop of the river is visible in one piece. Barn floors are earth and uneven, doorways are low, and inside it is dark, cool and dusty with dry leaf. Nothing is climbed: the upper ranks are reached by the grower on a ladder while you stand below. Boots or firm shoes, and a coat, because the barns are open to the wind by design. Anyone whose chest reacts badly to dust should say so when reserving, and we will ask the grower how much of the day can be done outside.

What one hundred and forty dollars covers

From $140 per person. Inside the figure: the grower's day from ten until four, entry to two barns and the sorting shed, and the short transfer between them. Outside it: getting yourself to the meeting point, lunch, a bed, and anything you choose to buy in the village afterwards. Nothing is sampled on this day and nothing is sold to you on it; this is an agricultural day about drying and grading, and the office sells no product of any kind. The barn owner sends the bill under his own name, nothing about your card is seen here, and the share this office earns arrives from him later.

Awkward things people ask about this day

Is anything smoked or sampled on the day?

No. Nothing is lit, nothing is handed round, and nothing is sold to you in the barns. The day is about cutting, threading, hanging and grading a crop, in the same way that a day in a hay barn is about hay. This office sells no product at all, and we would rather you knew that before reserving than felt short changed at four o'clock.

What happens if it rains?

It runs. The mark is one, runs whatever the numbers, and weather is not a reason for this day to move. Rain closes the barn slats, which is itself half of the lesson, and the walk out to the viewpoint is done in a coat or dropped in favour of a second barn. The only thing that stops the day is the grower being ill, in which case the date moves.

Can we take photographs inside the barns?

Usually yes, and the grower says so at the door. No flash near hanging leaf, for the ordinary reason that a barn full of dry leaf and open slats is a fire waiting for an excuse. Tripods are awkward on an earth floor and mostly get in the way. If a particular barn is closed to cameras that week, you are told before you walk in.