Cotton Harvest

1/11/12

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. 

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. 

cotton bale

       The cotton is havested into huge bales like the one in the photo above.  The bales are about ten feet high.

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.

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.

Alfalfa, Cotton, and Horses

10/17/11



Horse farm east of my house

      We live out in an agricultural area far west of Phoenix, Arizona.  Five years ago, there was nothing in this area but horse farms and crops.  The area was being built up just as the housing market crashed, and construction has come to a halt here.  Our subdivision is surrounded by alfalfa fields, cotton fields, and horse farms.

     To the south of our subdivision are alfalfa fields, and to the east are at least 15 horse farms.  There are also dairy farms nearby.

Harvested alfalfa field

The harvested alfalfa is used as hay for feeding the animals.  Alfalfa is a perennial, clover-like plant of the pea family that grows two to three feet high and has purple flowers.  I have read that it is possible to cut or harvest alfalfa monthly, but it seems to me that the farmers here harvest the fields every two months.  This photo is of a field that is two blocks from my house.






     The other two sides of our subdivision are surrounded by cotton fields.  There are many more cotton fields in this area than alfalfa fields.

Cotton field

     In the wild, cotton is a perennial, but farmers have cultivated the plant to grow as an annual shrub that reaches four to seven feet high.  The flowers are creamy white.

Cotton flower

The flowers turn red before falling off and revealing the formation of a boll.

     The boll will mature and pop, exposing fluffy, white cotton.

     When cotton is harvested here in late fall, there will be many stray peices of cotton that blow down the roads.

     The very green looks of the fields in the above photos are deceptive.  All of the fields are heavily irrigated, and if you drive a few miles away, there is nothing but brown dirt.







Cotton boll



                                                                                              





Fluffy white cotton