Pick A Bale O' Cotton, Pick a Bale A Day

 This may be way more exciting to me than it is to you, but here it is.

There used to be quite a bit of cotton grown around these parts.  In days past it was a huge part of the economy, and there were gins all over the place.  From what i understand, there is only one gin left in East Texas, and all the cotton that i know of is grown up around the town that has it.  I guess those pesky little polyesters have taken over cotton town. 

I have taken Ellie May and Jethro to a ginning demonstration given by the agrilife extension agent (that is what they are called around here...not county agent, but Agrilife Extension....guess the state is trying to distance the agents from the Mr. Kimball stereotype) and we have seen carding, spinning and weaving up close and personal.  But we have never seen a cotton harvest.

We pass acres and acres of cotton when we head north, and i have watched for the harvest in the past, but have always missed it.  One day you pass by and the fields are fluffy and white, the next  there is nothing but brown sticks. 

A couple of years ago i got lucky.  Ellie, Jethro and i were driving along, and what did we see....but a cotton harvest in process!!  Being the astute homeschooler that i am, i seized the opportunity for a learning experience, and embarrassed the kids by pulling over and making us all get out and watch.  Then i made it worse by getting into a conversation with one of the guys that drives the cotton from the big noisy green thing that picks the cotton to the over sized trash compactor in a glorified dump truck .  As you can see, we learned a lot of highly technical terminology in this conversation. 

 This was the big, noisy green machine that looked like it cost about a bazillion dollars that went up and down the rows of cotton.  Inside the yellow housing were these doohickeys that went round and round, and then the elves inside the green part blew the cotton balls up into the cage behind the guy you can see through the picture window.  I would love to make a joke about a guy that sits in a fish bowl all day watching fluff balls fly by, but i can't think of any.  Wouldn't have his job for anything, no matter how silly it looked...it was hotter than blue blazes that day, and bet that cab was sweltering, even if it was air conditioned.

When they get a row finished, they turn around and do it again, and again, and again.  All things considered, it went very quickly.  This crop was at least a couple of sections. We stopped around noon, and they were maybe a third of the way into the job.  By the time we passed again in early evening, it was done. 

I cannot imagine the expense of the machinery and insurance etc.etc.etc. that it takes to do this days work.  Think about that next time you pay less than $1000 for a pair of jeans. 

Every once in a while my new friend would drive out to the big noisy green machine and the elves would blow the fluff into the back of the  glorified dump truck.  The big noisy green thing was barely even stopped, and then it was rolling again.  It was like watching one of those mid-air refueling sequences.  Sorry, thought i got a shot of the transfer process, but i was probably too busy catching flies with my open mouth...it was just AMAZINGLY fast and efficient.

The glorified dump truck then brings the fluff back to the over sized trash compactor and does what dump trucks do best.

Then the over sized trash compactor did what compactors do best.  I am sorry, but i have slept since we saw this, and i cannot remember how many TONS of cotton fit in the compactor, but it was A LOT.          When the over sized compactor gets full, the bale is bound and tarped.  We missed this part, but i think it is fairly self explanatory.  Then, when you drive by several hours later, it looks like a bunch of truck drivers left their trailers neatly spaced by the side of the highway.

So here's the thing about seizing teachable moments.  You never now where you will end up.  When we saw all this, we were on the way to visit some very dear friends of the family, the children's Godmother's parents, if you can follow that.  In an effort to further cement through review and repetition what we had just learned, we shared the experience over lunch.   This lead Mrs. H. to share reminiscences of picking cotton by hand as a young girl.  My children learned from watching the process on the side of the road, but hearing stories of "the way things used to be" from someone they know really changed their perspective.  They weren't as excited as i was about watching the big noisy green machine, but they had a better idea of why it was amazing.  I never new that Mrs. H. picked cotton, and never would have thought to ask, but she had great, vivid stories about what it was like, and she turned a day of playing hooky into a day of unschool.  Ya can't get this stuff outta books, folks!!