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Expert
Posts: 1414
 
| Strange question but does anyone on here grow cotton? |
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 Hugs to You
Posts: 7551
   
Location: In The Land of Cotton | What is it that you need? |
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 Famous for Not Complaining
Posts: 8848
Location: Broxton, Ga | Lol yea I think you were in the wrong post too funny. |
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I Am a Snake Killer
Posts: 1927
Location: Golden Gulf Coast of Texas | I've stomped cotton if that counts! |
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 Extreme Veteran
Posts: 351
Location: Arkansas | My father grows cotton. Did you need me to ask him something? |
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 Expert
Posts: 4121
Location: SE Louisiana | alexblagg - 2015-08-19 10:33 PM
My father grows cotton. Did you need me to ask him something?
That's the stuff that grows in bottles of aspirin and other pills.. right?  |
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 Accident Prone
Posts: 22277
Location: 100 miles from Nowhere, AR | I grow cotton. |
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Sideways Riding Expert
Posts: 11371
Location: ND--it snows, it floods, it snows, it floods | Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 8:06 AM I grow cotton.
Can I come down for cotton harvest sometime? I just want to see how it's done. We are boring up here with our regular stuff. :D
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Accident Prone
Posts: 22277
Location: 100 miles from Nowhere, AR | docschic - 2015-08-20 3:59 PM Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 8:06 AM I grow cotton. Can I come down for cotton harvest sometime? I just want to see how it's done. We are boring up here with our regular stuff. :D
Sure you can! I love everything about cotton harvest--that's probably my favorite part of farming. We still use module builders and boll buggies, so at night, it looks like a small city out there with all the lights. We have a neighbor who has a round bale picker, and those are fun to watch too. |
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Accident Prone
Posts: 22277
Location: 100 miles from Nowhere, AR | One of my favorite pics from last year. Modules lined up into the sunset.
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 Peecans
| Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 3:45 PM
docschic - 2015-08-20 3:59 PM Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 8:06 AM I grow cotton. Can I come down for cotton harvest sometime? I just want to see how it's done. We are boring up here with our regular stuff. :D
I find cotton to be one of the most intresting crops!
Im up in Alberta..... we do not grow it lol. But my mom brought me home a stock of cotton, just a puff of white fluf on a stick, it amazes me how you can get from that to soft beautiful draping woven fabric, or thick jean material, or interlock knit (Im a sewer lol) and all the other products people use every day made from cotton, just amazing! Amazing!
We have cotton ranch ropes too.
I could not amagine if all the cotton crops were lost, diffently one of the most important, even though its not "food" (well cotton seed oil but you know what i mean :-)) |
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Accident Prone
Posts: 22277
Location: 100 miles from Nowhere, AR | della - 2015-08-20 6:34 PM Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 3:45 PM docschic - 2015-08-20 3:59 PM Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 8:06 AM I grow cotton. Can I come down for cotton harvest sometime? I just want to see how it's done. We are boring up here with our regular stuff. :D
I find cotton to be one of the most intresting crops! Im up in Alberta..... we do not grow it lol. But my mom brought me home a stock of cotton, just a puff of white fluf on a stick, it amazes me how you can get from that to soft beautiful draping woven fabric, or thick jean material, or interlock knit (Im a sewer lol ) and all the other products people use every day made from cotton, just amazing! Amazing! We have cotton ranch ropes too. I could not amagine if all the cotton crops were lost, diffently one of the most important, even though its not "food" (well cotton seed oil but you know what i mean :- ) )
It's a fun crop to grow (but a lot of work), fun to harvest (but a lot of work), and the ginning/washing/combing/spinning/weaving process is fascinating (but a lot of work LOL). There are still a few textile mills in North Carolina that spin and weave from raw cotton--Fruit of the Loom is the biggest, I think. I got to tour their facility, and the Cotton, Inc headquarters where they do research on uses and treatments, and promotion of cotton-wearing (remember Cotton, the fabric of our lives? That was them putting our check-off dollars to good use)
Anyway, cottonseed meal can be fed to cattle in limited amounts, but is toxic because of a compound in it called gossypol. (The oil is safe because it's just oil, no proteins) Gossypol is a natural defense mechanism in the plant. Research is being done to delete gossypol production in the seed, so it could be used for food by more species, including humans. That's one of the GMOs coming down the pipeline. |
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 My Heart Be Happy
Posts: 9159
Location: Arkansas | Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 5:43 PM
One of my favorite pics from last year. Modules lined up into the sunset.
My family farmed 7000 acres years ago, and my dad was the "cotton man". I loved everything about it, too. I know it sounds weird but I even liked the smell of defoliant!!!! Seeing that picture brings back so many good memories. I thought my dad would cry the year pen to paper showed it just wasn't feasible to grow it anymore. And the farm just never seemed the same. (Switched over to catfish farming soon after.) The thing I hate the most tho is that my son was just a baby when we stopped growing it, and Chandler would have loved that part as much as I did. And my daddy would have loved teaching him the ins and outs of all things cotton. |
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Accident Prone
Posts: 22277
Location: 100 miles from Nowhere, AR | I know what you mean. The smell of defoliant and fresh picked cotton is one of the greatest things in the world. I'm afraid we are going to lose cotton completely in this part of the world if things keep going the way they're going. We have already lost so much infrastructure due to reduced acres. My husband and I didn't grow any this year because of price, but my dad has about 475 acres still due to some premiums he secured for research stuff. We used to have at least 2500 acres in cotton every year.
My son has helped run a module builder since he was 7 and he LOVES it. He can't wait to learn to run a picker. Gotta love cheap farm kid labor. LOL |
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Sideways Riding Expert
Posts: 11371
Location: ND--it snows, it floods, it snows, it floods | Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 4:45 PM docschic - 2015-08-20 3:59 PM Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 8:06 AM I grow cotton. Can I come down for cotton harvest sometime? I just want to see how it's done. We are boring up here with our regular stuff. :D
When is normal harvest? And I will offer my tractor driving services if that helps. :D Maybe next year I can sneak away for a long weekend depending on where we are crop wise ourselves. |
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Accident Prone
Posts: 22277
Location: 100 miles from Nowhere, AR | docschic - 2015-08-21 8:51 AM Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 4:45 PM docschic - 2015-08-20 3:59 PM Three 4 Luck - 2015-08-20 8:06 AM I grow cotton. Can I come down for cotton harvest sometime? I just want to see how it's done. We are boring up here with our regular stuff. :D
We should be starting the first of October, DD60s are indicating mid September for defoliation, and it takes about 2 weeks from defoliation to harvest-ready. Ours won't take long (a week or so?) to get out, but there are plenty other growers around here still. A gin tour would be a must-see as well. |
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