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From the DEEP DEEP SOUTH here are some pics of the basic beginnings of next years Rendezvous T-Shirts.










Place your orders early! ! !


hb

Took me a minute...I'm pretty slow at times, and have never actually seen the raw materials in their raw form. Funny

Thats a lotta cotton...

I'll fess up. I had no idea that was cotton

you guys crack me up. but that is alot of cotton from the deep deep south, harry is that yours???

Matt wrote:you guys crack me up. but that is alot of cotton from the deep deep south, harry is that yours???

Not mine! ! I just drive by it. They have been harvesting Cotton for a couple of weeks now. Its quite interesting.....the harvester goes thru the fields and pick the cotton and it is collected in a hopper on the picker.

Then on the edge of the field there is a big "Box" that is the size of the bales shown in the pics. The harvester dumps into the "Box" and there is a hydraulic "Stomper" that runs on tracks the length of the box. The Stomper compacts the cotton into the bail as shown.

From there a truck backs up to the Bale, deploys his "Roll Back" body and with a conveyor pulls the Bale up onto the truck.....one bale to a truck.....thats how big they are.

From there its off to the Cotton Gin and the next time we see it is when Walter, Giff or Harv shows up a the rendezvous with T-Shirts.....pretty cool...Uhh.

Not for sure but I believe that one of those bales brings the farmer about $50K


When I travel to the north I always enjoy seeing things that are unique to the northeast.....like Lobster....Fir Trees....Maple Syrup and Trees.....and those triangular things on the front of the pickups........

Just thought you guys would get a kick out of seeing King Cotton! ! !


hb

Harry,

Made me grin. My parents were depression era Okies. Think "Grapes of Wrath" just not as well off as the Joads. I heard about picking cotton a LOT when I was a kid growing up in the Panhandle of Texas. When I was little and I'd want an increase in my allowance money mom would let me know that her 'allowance' when she was a kid was that once she got into high school and needed a little spending money Grand Pa could finally let her keep half of what she earned picking cotton by hand. Hard times back then. I always grin when I think of how many deep south sayings stem from that era. Boy, them 'cottenpickers' sure had a 'long row to hoe back' then.

I'm glad that I never had to pick cotton, but I'm also glad for the work ethic they were able to leave me with. Because of their determination that I get a better education then they had and be willing to work I'm "sh*tin' in tall cotton now". I'll bet our northern neighbors never heard that one.

I don't see near as much cotton where I live now. Thanks for the photo I hadn't thought about cotton farming & cotton farmers in a long time.

Later,

DanielM

It's a good thing that farmers today have the machinery like they do. Could you imagine having to pick all that cotton by hand like they use too....OUCH!

DQ

I remember driving through the Carolinas and Georgia as a kid on Route 1, 17 & 301 and watching hundreds of people picking cotton in the early 50's. It seemed like an all day adventure just getting through those two states, especially if you got behind a trailer full of product being towed by an old chain drive Reo truck or a pulp logging truck. It used to take us between 5 and 6 days to get from Salem, Mass to Miami, Fl. no 95 or turnpikes, it was a learning experience on rural American life that the kids don't get today.
I drove 95 last year, 1485 miles from Stuart to Salem in 21.5 hours of actual driving time, all I saw was Pedros billboards, rude New York drivers and road alligators. Sorry to hijack you post Harry, but it brought back some old memories of the rural Southeast coastal plain and fields of white cotton and brown stalks.
Pete

No hijack taken here Pete....just good ole conversation....

My mother grew up in mid state Alabama....not the wealthest part of the country (even today). Mom's dad worked at a sawmill and they were not very well off.

I have heard her talk about her whole family picking cotton until your hands would bleed.....

Trust me, I did not come from a wealthy family....at all....but we sure had it better than a lot of others. My dad always provided for us and mom always kept us fed....together they raised us with IRON FIST.(not a bad thing).

Cotton was king here until in the late 50's/mid 60's.....then the Boll Weevil came in and destroyed crops. Cotton was not grown again here in Alabama until about 10 years ago. There are folks that do nothing but travel looking at traps in efforts of detecting the presents of the dreaded Boll Weevil.

Its amazing how much better each generation has it than the one before them.....a good thing

Doug.....the cotton harversters are incrediablly complicated with thousands of moving parts and very expensive to maintain.

But in spite of everything the ole farmer keeps on keeping on......

Wonder how many pairs of Skivvies are in that one bale of cotton

hb

My relatives were not in the South working cotton, they were in the Caribbean working sugar cane .... this is why I feel it is my responsibility to drink as much rum as I can !! :-D

I was "selected" to attend a special boys school in 1967 between Daleville and Enterprise,Alabama.They too were decimated by the boll weevil.They turned to peanuts because of the work of George Washington Carver and prospered.Today there is a statute to the boll weevil in Enterprise.