Winter in Tobacco Valley

Turn the clock back about a century and you would find the town of Windsor covered over with vast tobacco fields stretching to the horizon in every direction.

Yankee Farmlands № 52 (Shade tobacco farm, Windsor, Connecticut) — “Yankee Farmlands № 52”
Shade tobacco farm and curing shed, Windsor, Connecticut
© 2016 J. G. Coleman

The moon crests over drifting clouds as night falls on a frigid tobacco farm in the Connecticut Valley. Dormant fields, still months from being planted in the spring, spread far beyond a nearby curing shed clad in worn, mismatched boards.

The town of Windsor, which flanks the western side of the Connecticut River in the northern reaches of the state, represents a particularly unique blend of rural and developed landscapes. Turn the clock back about a century and you would find the area covered over with vast tobacco fields stretching to the horizon in every direction. Once the tobacco market began to steadily decline after the early 1900s, farmers gradually sold off large swaths of surplus cropland.

This gradual shift in land use has resulted in remaining tobacco farms being tightly intermingled with busy roads, corporate office parks and neighborhoods, maintaining an unmistakable presence in the community and hearkening back to earlier days.