Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Tis The Season....


for cotton harvest!! Dad started stripping cotton yesterday, so I took the opportunity to snap a few shots. The field is so white that from the highway it looks like snow. This could possible be one of his best fields ever, and he has grown some pretty good cotton these last couple of years.











This picture is blurry, but he had just dumped a load onto the bowl buggy, which my brother is driving. And Preston is moving the cotton around so that they can get more into the buggy. The first time you see this done you think that they are going to dump it on the ground!










Here he is dumping the cotton into the module builder, and from there is gets pressed into a nice block of cotton that can be hauled away.

















Isn't it beautiful?










"Riding off into the sunset"!











When I was little, my family raised lots of cotton as did others in this valley. I remember getting to jump in the cotton trailers to smash down the cotton so that they could get as much as possible in the trailers. We also lived right next to the cotton gin, and I remember one time spending the night inside of one of the trailers. All those fun memories came flooding back yesterday with the smell of the cotton! What a wonderful life growing up as a farm kid....and being a farmer's wife!!

5 comments:

Helen said...

What beautiful cotton pictures! Awww....yes, I, too, have such fond memories of cotton harvest. I could not wait until I could 'play' in the cotton trailer. Like a lot of other things that I thought were fun, turns out I was really accomplishing a 'job.' Oh, well, somebody had to do it! I can still smell that cotton smell, feel the crispness in the air, see that deep blue sky and remember trying to determine the shape of the pure white, cottony clouds that floated by as we laid back in the mounds of cotton after wearing ourselves out bouncing and jumping and 'running' as fast as we could through the cotton from one end of the trailer to the other. Awww.....yes, mighty good farm memories. However, there was just one thing wrong with this picture. Sooner or later, the time came that we had to get out of the trailer. Now considering that I was deathly afraid of heights and the only way to get out was to climb up over the end and then climb down the side of the trailer. Now some of the trailers had some decent ladder-like rungs, but others had almost none. Usually, this blissful fun ended in tears.....and in Daddy finally giving in and climbing up the side of the trailer to rescue me. But strangely enough, even the fear and tears involved in getting out of the trailer never stopped me from being ready to scurry up the side of the trailer and jump in the cotton the next day.

Laura said...

It's beautiful Candace! Nate and I have been saying the last week too, how it looks like snow back here!

Anonymous said...

It looks beautiful!

Katy said...

Hey Candace! I'm so glad I can read your blog now:) Thanks for your thoughtful comments on my PETA bloggie post. I love how technology has brought people closer (in an interesting way) and I am glad to know what's going on in your world!

Janette's Joys said...

Candice those are beautiful pictures! Thanks for sharing some of the magic of harvest with us all:)