Re: cotton, educate me

Posted by jackinok on October 30, 2012 at 09:03:05 from (162.58.82.136):

In Reply to: cotton, educate me posted by ericlb on October 30, 2012 at 06:12:24:

here,we planted with cotton planters. Looked very much like standard row planters but the plates had sort of like teeth on them for lack of a better way to describe it. Lots of planters planted seed at three different depths ,often in lister rows, to get the best germination of your seed. Once it was up,we would go through and thin( chop) cotton and weed by hand leaving the best looking plants . There was mechanical cotton chopers available( still is) in both tractor and horse drawn models, but they were not widley used simply because they often left the worst plants and reduced yeilds. Usualy we would weed two or three times by hand in the rows,and use a cotton slip or go devil to turn dirt as plants grew into the rows, eventualy leaving ground level. Cotton was picked several times (in fact almost continuosly) once it was ready. But todays farmers generally defoliate the plants ,and have seed that matures within a few days.the more you can have your plants mature evenly the less time you had to spend picking of course. We hauled it in cotton trailers to the gin where it was graded according to fiber length,trash,dirt,seed etc. my aunt graded cotton and ran the gin here for most of her life.there was a box ,i still have one somewhere, with about as i recall 30 or more samples in it of various grades of cotton, and she would simply match them as closely as she could. lead to a lot of how shall we say "heated " debates when farmers didnt agree with her grading. but most really knew she was fair. and if there was some folks having a particularly hard time ,they were normally graded up a notch or two,though it wasnt really discussed. every town of any size at all had one or more gins,and they competed with each other for buisness. some folks sold there seed to the gin,some hauled it back home for feed which was what we did. wasnt near as many hulls in hand picked cotton, but we have hauled many a wagon load of hulls home also to spread on fields. ww2 nearly ended the cotton buisness in this area.it was labor intensive, lots of farm boys died or were crippled during the war,or simply never returned to the farm after seeing the world away from it. cotton gins closed up all over. and the few left only ran a few days a year.giving rise to the module builder.you basically press your cotton into a module(S) where it can set at gin until it is processed.cotton gins run only what few days they need to instead of being open for months like the old days. alot has changed but mostly like all things its became more mechanized.cotton prices are increasing steadily the last few years due in my opinion to a lot of the green product craze. a good rotation for cotton was blackeyed or cowpeas.which explains their popularity in the south in years past. ive picked about as much peas by hand as cotton.old joke in the south was you could always tell a farmer in the south. because he was always hunched over looking down! every hear of a man looking you in the eye? a guy had to straighten up to do that,it took effort,it was a sign a man thought you were worth the effort,and worthy of respect.

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