Nets rolled up for the winter await the spring on a snow-covered "shade-grown" tobacco field in Avon, Connecticut. Tobacco barns stand behind the field.

another way as well. Surrounding the city of Hartford and stretching north into Massachusetts along the Connecticut River is a broad expanse of level ground that is the finest agricultural land in the Central Valley, and probably the finest in New England. The land is flatter, which reduces soil erosion and facilitates plowing, and the soil is richer, which feeds the farm and ultimately the farmer. Portions of the region are so flat that a blindfolded balloonist upon landing and removing his blindfold might think he had touched down in Kansas. Probably every major crop has been grown here at one time or another. The best-known products were the famous Connecticut Valley "shade-grown" tobacco (now down to less than a thousand acres), garden seeds (currently only one producer), and Wethersfield onions (no longer grown).¹ Today, "broadleaf" tobacco, potatoes, summer vegetables, and dairy goods are the primary agricultural products.

The tobacco industry is responsible for one of the most characteristic facets of the Central Valley landscape: tobacco barns. Farmers here

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