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I'm a relative newcommer here in Ontario, thus I don't know a lot about their tobacco industry. You see farms all the way across the north shore of Lake Erie with evidence tobacco once was grown. There was still some acreage being grown when I moved here 5 years ago. I think that is almost down to nothing this year. I know there was a plant near Guelph, processed tobacco, employed quite a large number of people, and it closed after last years crop was processed. I stand corrected but I think that was the last such processing facility. I haven't been giving it a whole lot of attention, however I can't say I've seen a field of tobacco anywhere this spring. I follow auctions quite closely, especially auctions with offset tractors, and one thing I've noticed, if there is an offset tractor, there is usually a set of cultivators, but not always. I'm surprised I don't see more cultivators for sale, as there are a lot of offset tractor around here with Woods belly mowers. Could be the owners are sitting on the cultivators in case they decide to sell the tractor. There was an auction this spring, near Tillsonburg, I wanted to go to. It had 32 offset tractors, and I suspect cultivators with most of them. The day of the auction it was close to freezing, rained or snowed most of the day, thus I decided the best place for someone my age was home by the fireside. I haven't run across anyone who did go. I suspect the old iron traders had a hey day. Those guys probably cut the cultivators up for scrap. In Nova Scotia, the reason we liked offset tractors in the hay field, is with over 40" of annual rainfall, quite well spread out, thus we never raked windrows together. In the 50s we mowing with offset tractors with 7' semi-mount mowers, and raking with the same tractors. We then moved to 7' and 9' haybines, thus the offset tractor was the best rake tractor going.
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