South Georgia Snow!

[capncarl]

I took this photo this evening of the cotton field at the end of our neighborhood. This morning it was a lot brighter and looked completely white. Corn is long gone, Peanuts and soybeans are already harvested, Cotton is just starting to be harvested and the Pecan groves are being groomed for their crop. Fall is in the air!

[atgcpaul]

Is cotton a once a year crop or is there another harvest in the spring?

[capncarl]

Cotton is a once a year crop, it's planted March/April and harvested in October/November.
It is a controlled plant like cannabis

[atgcpaul]

It is a controlled plant like cannabis

I didn't know that. Controlled why? Uses up a lot of soil nutrients or could spread disease or something else?

[capncarl]

Boll weevil control. Unless you are a farmer (probably some qualifications, i.e. Allotments, ) you can't plant and grow any. There are strict controls on monitoring it, boll weevil traps, people constantly monitoring insects etc. Boll weevils completely killed the crop starting in the mid 1917 and it wasn't growable until sometimes in the 1960s.

[trungdok]

That's some pretty facts. The pic is very nice as well.

[capncarl]

They picked the cotton yesterday sometimes evening, dang that was fast, must have used 2-3 pickers. I didn't hear them, I was outside all day in the shade sanding (something I seldom am able to do because it is so hot, usually I sand in the shop with the AC on). With this photo I'm only able to capture one hill with the bales on it but they go as far as you can see the other way as well, and on into the depth of the field. I'm guesstimating around 100 bales ( they call them modules of seeds and lint) in this photo. Modules weigh. 5000lb +, price ranges from $.50 - $1.50 lb., this was nice looking cotton so I hope the value is high.

[atgcpaul]

Thanks for sharing. Learned a lot of new stuff with this thread. I also did not realize they baled cotton like this--like they do the hay or straw up here.

[leehljp]

Boll weevil control. Unless you are a farmer (probably some qualifications, i.e. Allotments, ) you can't plant and grow any. There are strict controls on monitoring it, boll weevil traps, people constantly monitoring insects etc. Boll weevils completely killed the crop starting in the mid 1917 and it wasn't growable until sometimes in the 1960s.

Over in the Mississippi Delta, cotton was grown in the '40s. My dad was not drafted into the army for WWII but was assigned the task of overseeing several farms around his in the planting and harvesting of corn, soy beans and cotton while the other farmers were drafted into the war fight. I grew up in the '50s (born Jan '47) with cotton as the primary crop with soy beans followed by corn and then rice in the Mississippi Delta area, an area about 150 miles by 75 miles. BTW, I do remember the mules dad had and the use of mules as opposed to tractors. I think Dad got rid of the mules in '54 or '55 and only had tractors after that.

DDT was the common pesticide of the 40s into the 50s here, but that changed in the mid 50s to other pesticides. (DDT was banned in the early 60s, IIRC).

By the way, the cotton pickers for those round "bales" cost about half a million dollars each.

Another tidbit of information: It was actually DDT that stopped malaria. Until DDT, malaria was very prevalent. My aunt (90), a retired educator and still living in Sacramento, CA recently told me about the year she had to drop out of college for a year due to malaria. And about that time DDT came along and was used extensively throughout the farming area of the south. It controlled the mosquito population and malaria came under control.

[capncarl]

Prior to these round modules the cotton growers used a separate machine called a module builder. It looked like a large semi sized shipping container cotton combines discharged their pickings into and it would compact and wrap it in a big bale that size. A large flat bed truck with a conveyor belt bed would scoot under it and pick it up and scatter cotton all over the roads transporting it to the gin. Now the growers are converting to the new pickers ( at $600,000 a pop ) that make the 5000 pound round bales (modules) They say it eleminates 3-4 workers, 2-3 large tractors and drivers and several other support vehicles. A flock of large canvas covered semi bodied truck tilt bed trucks swarm in on the field and pick up 3 bales per load. Interesting to watch. These trucks don't scatter near as much cotton on the highway as the old large modules did but it still looks like it snowed on the sides of the main roads to the cotton gins.

[capncarl]

Leehljp,
when we were children my mother would get several gallon coffee cans full of DDT from my grandfather to use in the house to control fleas and ants. She would scoop up several handfuls and pour in in an old sock, and pound it around against the walls as an applicator, then sweep it all over the floor. It did kill fleas. They were daddy's socks so I guess DDT finally killed him earlier this year at 99. Military uniforms were also mfg':d from DDT infused materials during the Korean war for insect control.

[Slik Geek]

Very enjoyable exchange, I appreciated the insight and history.
I saw this post right after I returned from Huntsville, AL where I had just seen a field of cotton like the initial photo. It reminded me of the first time I visited Huntsville thirty years ago, at the same time of year. I left work in the morning to go to the airport. As I entered my car, I looked at the corn field ready for harvest just a few feet from the parking lot in northern Illinois. When I arrived at my destination and parked my rental car that afternoon, they too had a field immediately next to the parking lot. Except instead of corn, it was cotton, the first time I had seen it personally. Virtually an identical scene, except a different crop.