Meanwhile back at the farm...it's cotton season

A field of cotton--
as if the moon
had flowered.

~ Matsuo Basho [Translated by Robert Hass]

R Bros. first round bale, August 2015. (Photo by CR near Sinton, TX)

How can you tell it is cotton season?

There are many ways I am sure, but even this unobservant creature knows that fluffy white fibers gathering at the edges of the highway mean that cotton picking has begun.

My friends promised a ride on their new picker if I made it "home" during the few weeks of the cotton harvest. And, because farmers can only estimate when the cotton is "ready," we did not know if the harvest would coincide with any visit south.

But my sister and I had reason to travel south this weekend just as I received a message from a friend with photo attached - a cotton picker in the field. And as we neared our hometown, we saw the pillowy piles of snow-white cotton clinging to the grass along the asphalt. As we neared our friends' farm (see July 9, 2015 post) we noticed two cotton pickers moving quickly through a cotton field. Yellow wrapped round bales were lined up along a dirt road.

Our friends farm a number of fields across the area (thousands of acres) and we thought this must be them - huge green machines moving steadily back and forth across the field. So we made a u-turn and parked just where the dirt road met the highway. I walked towards the bales and took a look at the tag attached -- not our friends' farm, our friends not listed as growers. Dang. I am not supposed to be in this field!

I turned to head back up the road in time to see a farm truck pull over to the passenger side of the car. They stopped and talked to my sister. Then they came down the road to me. We introduced ourselves and chatted for a few minutes.

"Have you ever seen these round cotton bales before?" asked the driver. "Only in pictures until now," I replied. "My friends, the R Brothers, have a picker like this and sent me a photo of their first bale," I added. "Well, these new machines aren't fool proof," the man told us. "Our second bale ended up not being wrapped. It was a mess." 

We wished them a good harvest, retreated to the car, and headed down the highway.*

At the edge of the cotton field

Looking out over the freshly picked field. There are two pickers in the distance. You can just make out the yellow bales they will carry back to the road.

Big tires leave big tracks in the dust of the road.

Round bale of cotton - 92 inches in diameter - yellow plastic wrapped - tagged and waiting for transport to the gin.

I thought I might be able to read this tag if I enlarged it. No such luck. The gin could tell me by the #. I think the farmer is a fellow originally from my father's home town.

Later that evening we watched our home town clobber another area high school football team (57 to 12...really!).

We sat with our friends and got directions to the field where they would be picking the next day (the right field). I then drew a cryptic map to the location. [Yeah, it's my handwriting -- evidence of my well-earned "C" in penmanship. It made sense at the time and did take us where we needed to be. No more trespassing this trip.]

Yeah. It made sense at the time. And we did find our way.

We arrived at the field and parked. Fairly quickly the new cotton picker pulled around and stopped. I recognized the driver - AD, our friends' nephew. "Want to ride?" he called and I scrambled up the ladder. He quickly explained the way the new equipment works. The cab included 3 monitors and all kinds of switches and buttons (bells and whistles). I listened and watched (and took pictures).

You can see the bale wind up and get its measurement as it reaches maximum size. The system tells how much of the yellow plastic wrapping remains. It also lets you know the status of the equipment as the bale is dropped.

OK. I know it is a bad photo, but this screen shows a rear camera view of the dropped bale.

We picked six rows at a time. The plants feed through and the cotton is stripped away, leaving behind mostly naked stalks.

It looks like we were skipping rows, but the pickers ran every other set of 6 rows. The machines have lots of stuff sticking out including a slew (a goodly number) of mirrors. By staggering the rows, the pickers maximize their picking, work together, and don't run into each other.

I have always loved the fan pattern of planted fields. When we were kids we thought the rows looked like spiders running to keep pace with our car as we headed down the highway. [Note the yellow bales in the distance.]

We moved down the rows and dropped a bale near the road (where a specialized forklift moves the bales into a line of four).

Then it was my sister's turn to ride. They switched drivers and she rode with BR. I headed off to write tags and learn a little more about the process with CR. She explained that the machines have running lights and can operate late into the evenings. Some nights they are tagging bales at midnight (taking care to avoid rattlesnakes and other critters out after dark).

Our friends were operating one new "round bale" picker and one "old style" picker. The older machine would dump its load into a rectangular module builder. One farmhand operates the module builder, packing the loose cotton down into a huge block. That too is covered in plastic, tagged, and hauled to the gin.

As I filled out tags, I noticed the names of the owners of the different farms/fields my friends cultivate. They are people I know. We went to church together. We sat alongside each other in the classroom. But they no longer plow, plant and harvest their own fields.

I thought about the stories my Daddy told of farming - plowing with a mule,** hoeing weeds (chopping cotton), picking cotton by hand in the hot Texas sun.*** I have heard, but I cannot imagine. My Daddy fled the farm - first to the Army, then to college and law school. He would till his own garden, but he never farmed again.

We are of the farm, but we don't really know it anymore.

But we know some farmers. We know they spend long, hot, hard days (and nights) - plowing, planting, harvesting and more.**** Technology makes part of the process more efficient, but farming isn't easy (no, farming is not for sissies).

Farmers still pray for rain and then pray that it doesn't rain. They worry about the price of fertilizer and equipment. They watch the prices of grain, corn and cotton rise and fall.

They are smart, hardworking, loyal, generous and kind (fun and funny-I don't know that I have ever laughed so hard as when I have shared time with them).

They are perhaps the most faithful people I know. Every season they prepare for a crop, expecting that earth and moisture and seed will come together with light and warmth - that sprouts will rise in the fields and bear fruit.

God bless 'em (but don't send any rain for a few more weeks - let them get the cotton in first).


NOTES:

*I was telling our friends this story and they started to chuckle - "Well, did you get a ride?" asked CR. It was pretty funny after I got over the "yes, this was a mistake" feeling in my gut. I was just glad those fellows were trusting and friendly. Of course, two middle-aged (OK close enough) women aren't much of a threat standing in the heat of a south Texas cotton field.

**I have an odd wire basket-looking thing hanging in my kitchen. My Daddy saw it and asked if I knew what it was. Yes, I did. It is a mule muzzle. A mule would wear it to prevent him from "grazing" on the crop while cultivating - it also kept him from biting the "operator."

***There were other stories too - raiding a neighbor's watermelon patch, skinny dipping in the tank (man made pond), and getting in trouble with his brothers.

****And while some are in the fields others are cooking and hauling and washing and making sure everyone is fed on time. The chuck wagon is alive and well on the modern farm, it just looks a little different.

A final note from Mr. Faulkner (because he captured the way it used to be):

   The cotton was open and spilling into the fields; the very air smelled of it. In field 
   after field as he passed along the pickers, arrested in stooping attitudes, seemed 
   fixed amid the constant surf of bursting bolls like the piles in surf, the long, 
   partly-filled sacks streaming away behind them like rigid frozen flags. The air 
   was hot, vivid and breathless--a final fierce concentration of the doomed and 
   dying summer.  

     ~ William Faulkner, The Hamlet   


OK. So there is a final final note. Just after publishing this post I saw this stunning photo and asked if I could share it here. The photo is by Austin Davis and was taken as he was picking cotton this morning.

When the rain comes - photo by Austin Davis [Somewhere near Sinton, Texas]

       
Yeah, I lied. I just found this photo. I picked it up in a junk store, but thought it spoke volumes about early farmers in Texas. I found it in Georgetown and so I suspect these are Williamson County farmers. Because I have no such photos of my family, I will claim these people as mine.

Cotton farmers, Williamson County, Texas 1920s (?)