The 2003 harvest season is coming to a close for the farmers in Robeson County. After a long summer, with plenty of rain for a change, they are busy finishing up on the last soybeans and picking the last fields of cotton.

Unlike most years in the recent past, our farmers had almost too much rain this summer. Heavy and frequent rainfall throughout the year prevented some fields from being planted on time. Then when the crops were finally planted, some of them drowned or were severely stunted because of standing water in the fields.

Overall, yields this year turned out to be pretty good. In fact, it appears that yields across the county will be slightly above long-term averages. This is definitely a drastic difference from the past three years when drought and extremely hot weather caused yields for almost all crops to fall far below average. In addition, prices for most crops have rebounded slightly, providing our farmers the opportunity to receive decent prices during the same year they have decent yields. It's about time; our farmers really needed some relief.

Last week, I had the opportunity to pull my Blazer into a farm path and watch a beautiful field of cotton being harvested. Where the cotton pickers had not already done their work, the entire field looked like snow. From where I was sitting to the woods at the far end of the field was solid white. I am sure yields in this field were more than two bales per acre.

Picking cotton on this farm was a big operation. There were two huge cotton pickers slowly weaving their way back and forth through the field, stripping all the cotton stalks of their brilliant whiteness.

There was a huge tractor pulling a huge box-looking contraption on wheels called a boll buggy. The cotton pickers would alternately dump its load of cotton into the buggy. Then the buggy with its load of cotton was transported to the end of the field and then dumped into another even larger box-looking machine called a module builder.

There were two module builders at the end of the field, each powered by a huge tractor. Operators on the top of each module builder were manipulating hydraulic levers, packing as much cotton into the box as possible. When they filled the big box, a back door was opened and the box was pulled away, leaving a huge rectangular shaped pile of cotton larger than most mobile homes. This is what many of you have seen sitting in the fields with tarps over the top. When the cotton gin has time, the modules are moved there for ginning.

To top it off, there was a huge tractor pulling a huge disc around the field behind the pickers. This process destroyed all the cotton stalks and prepared the land so winter wheat could be planted.

I sat there in amazement. There must have been a million dollars worth of equipment in that field. My, how times have changed.

I remember growing up on a small tenant farm in Wayne County where my father tried to grow about six acres of cotton each year. I thought cotton was fascinating back then, but it must have been because I was in school during cotton picking time, and there was no way my father would let me miss school to pick cotton. I didn't know it until later, but I was lucky. I was not so lucky with tobacco, because tobacco harvest happened during the summer when I did not have to go to school.

I always thought it would be great to be able to make some extra money picking cotton. Many people living in our community would come to the farm to pick cotton during cotton-picking time. My father paid them so much a pound for all they picked. I still remember one older lady who always picked cotton for my father. She could pick over 400 pounds a day, right by herself. I knew how to multiply and add, so it was obvious to me that she was making a lot of money. I really wanted to be able to pick cotton in order to make some money of my own.

Back then we did not have any of the equipment like I saw in the field last week. If we had, all of the cotton on our farm could have been picked in ten minutes. But enough people came to the farm to help pick cotton that it did not take but one week to get it all picked. They usually started on Monday and finished by Friday.

One year something happened. When I was out of school on Saturday, there was still a lot of cotton in the field to be picked. My father told me I could go pick with the rest of the workers, and he would pay me just like he paid them. I picked cotton all day Saturday, just as hard as I could. I picked 80 pounds. That was the last time I asked if I could pick cotton.

Maybe I'll share more about cotton later. But for now, I'm going to get ready to enjoy the holidays. I hope you do the same.

E-mail address: Everett_Davis@ncsu.edu

Mailing Address:
P. O. Box 2280
Lumberton, NC 28359-2280

Phone: 910-671-3276
Fax: 910-671-6278

Date Created 12/08/03