1/11/12
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| Cotton field nearing harvest |
So much has been going on in our home lately, I'm lucky to have a few minutes to get this post up. Between another set of visitng relatives, a dog in the hospital because she got into a relative's human medications, and the usual colds and viruses going around, there has been no time for anything. The harvesting of the cotton fields here has been going on for a month and is now finished.
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| closer to harvest |
I don't know whether the fields are sprayed with a defoliant or the leaves are left to die off naturally, but when the leaves are brown, harvesting begins.
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| cotton bale |
The cotton is havested into huge bales like the one in the photo above. The bales are about ten feet high.
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| cotton bales lining the fields |
The harvested cotton bales line all the fields in the area, and the edges of the roads that run along the sides of the fields.
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| harvested field |
The bales stay along side of the fields for a few days until they are picked up for processing. After that the fields are quickly plowed and planted again. And all we are left with are stray cotton balls blowing down our rural roads. Sometimes it looks like blowing snow.
Looks like a huge operation. Is it all mechanized?
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post. I've never seen cotton bales in the field like this before. Must be a LOT of cotton out there.
ReplyDeleteLee,
ReplyDeleteIt is all mechanized. Cotton picking machines (as opposed to strippng machines) are used here, and then the cotton is put into a module builder (to make those rectangular bales in the photos).
Anita,
ReplyDeleteThe Phoenix area of Arizona grows more cotton than any other part of the state, about 300,000 bales out of a total of 500,000 for the whole state. The state of Texas grows the most cotton. When I googled cotton growing I found out that India is the second largest producer of cotton behind China. The US comes in third in production.