Cotton Harvest, or What Happened to October and November

Whew!  Weber Farms has made it through another year! 

Harvest season was incredibly busy this year.  I'm not sure why it felt busier than usual, but this is the first one with us raising four children.  (Blame it on the baby!)  Picking cotton, digging and combining peanuts, cutting soybeans, shredding cotton stalks and planting winter wheat, all in fields near and far.  It was a whole lot of work, even with a hired hand.  Fortunately, I don't have the skill set required to operate heavy farm machinery, so I was free to run the household.  It's OK.  We all agree that I make a better cook, and Jason makes a better farmer. 

I took these pictures during one beautiful afternoon at the field by Uncle Calvin's house.  Because the operation was so close, I brought the kids and a cookie break on the golf cart. 

Jack lived in this muscle shirt this summer.  He would still be wearing it now, in December, had I not removed it from circulation.

We hung out with Jason as he finished packing a cotton module. 

This is our future farmer.  Jack's heart is full of tractors.  Seriously.  I just took him on our first ever mama/son date (he wanted Hardee's), and he talked about farm equipment while he ate French fries.  Yep, tractors and what it might take to convert his buddy Kaden into an Auburn fan.

 Henry loved the noise and action of the module builder.

This module was almost finished.  It takes about 4-5 dumps from the cotton picker's basket to fill it from the ground up, but each dump has to be stomped down by that hydraulic presser thingie to make room.  It's kind of like putting your t-shirts into your messy dresser drawer.

Jason unrolled the heavy tarp on top of the module, then Uncle Calvin drove the tractor and module builder away to reposition for the next module. 

Jason hitched a ride while he pulled the side of the tarp.  He makes this rough job look easy.

See, nuthin to it. 

Almost finished--just have to cinch the tarp strap and mark the module for Weber Farms!

Ahh..my favorite part!  Cotton graffiti. 

Owen had been getting a ride in the picker while his grandpa was operating it.  He has started building modules, under the tutelage of his daddy, and is pretty good at it!

We stayed long enough to watch the first dump into the next module. 

 And then it was time to go make supper and change a diaper.

Cotton Harvest

Cotton is a favorite crop of mine.
It's southern snow!

The fields are all white after a defoliant is sprayed. This makes the plants drop their leaves, so the cotton can be picked more cleanly. They are also sprayed with a boll opener to open late-maturing bolls.
Here is an open boll. Note the five locks. Imagine positioning your fingers in order to pick it with one grab.
This is a closed boll. This poor little guy won't get picked. He was too stubborn to open, and now he'll be missed.

The locks fluff out into puffy strands when picked.
This is a hard-locked boll. The fibers inside will not fluff out and will not be picked. You can imagine how the boll looks at a younger stage. It develops in sections, sort of the same shape as a wedge of citrus.
These are the seeds that are contained within the cotton. Picking them out is time consuming. You can see the cotton fibers, which are actually hollow. Cotton is graded by staple length, how long the fibers are, and by micronaire, the diameter of the fibers.

Here are some little cotton pickers:
Here is what the empty cotton stalk looks like. It has a beauty all its own.For the farmer in you:
This is a real cotton picker. It is 4-row picker that Jason and his dad adjusted to pick their skip-row planting. They plant two rows and then skip one. They have a better yield that way, and also a lower cost of seed, fertilizer and chemicals.

The cotton is dumped from the cotton picker into this module builder. (Some farms have "boll buggies" that haul the cotton from the picker to the module builder.) The fluffy cotton gets stomped down with a hydraulic press that is powered by a tractor. It is packed into a giant block called a module. When a module is completed, it gets covered with a tarp to protect it from rain. The back of the module builder is opened, then the whole thing is raised off the ground and driven away, leaving the module behind. The module is tagged and marked with a specialized spray "paint," identifying it with the correct farm. The cotton gin takes it from there. A driver picks up the module and takes it to the gin, where it waits to be processed into bales (500-pound blocks of ginned cotton.) Farmers are paid by the bale, according to the quality of the cotton.
This is inside the module builder, before the module is totally finished. It was mostly packed, or you wouldn't see Jason and the kids at all! They would be in over their heads.
Jumping into cotton is a lot of fun. Years ago, Jason would climb on top of one of those posts, then get someone to raise it all the way up before he jumped. Here we were falling backwards into the cotton. It's such a funny experience. I always feel like I have to plug my nose before I jump!
Jack was oblivious to the action. In this picture, you can see how dirty the cotton actually is. The dirt is mostly dead, crunchy leaves, called pepper trash.

This year's cotton crop was a beautiful one. There was no rain to destroy the open bolls. It picked very cleanly, and you can clearly see the difference between the picked and the unpicked. If a field doesn't pick very well, sometimes farmers will do a second picking after a few more bolls open. This is called scrapping.
Owen is in the command seat of the module builder.


Here is Maggie. She doesn't like to miss out on anything.

Here is my cotton bowl. Heh heh. Clouds for supper!

And here is my attempt at a still life: