Walking in High Cotton, Hard Times Never Looked So Good

Around here, a good cotton crop is normally about thirty to thirty-six inches tall. The cotton in the field behind me is about sixty inches tall. It is lush and pretty, and totally worthless. Want to know why?  Take a look at cotton from a good year.  I'm not sure if it's the same field.  It was taken in the fall of 2016.

The cotton plant is compact and the cotton is thick and plentiful on the plant.  This field had just been picked except for these two rows so that is why there are some stripped stalks behind this and and empty field.

After a long drought this summer, the cotton crop looked dismal; not just this field, but everything around here was stunted, including corn and hay. By the end of August, most of the cotton in this field was barely a foot tall, with a few bolls hanging from each bare twig. The leaves had long since dried up and fallen off.  By the end of July, these plants had given all they had. Farmers didn't harvest it, either.  Maybe because such slim pickings wouldn't make a profit or the cotton machinery wasn't scheduled to be here. I don't know; I wasn't consulted.

But then, at the end of August, it started raining. And raining. It rained for days on end, stopped for a few days, and then rained again. And suddenly, the crops started growing again. The corn, which had already been stripped and baled, put up new shoots and entire fields of corn were growing again. The puny cotton twigs sprouted new leaves and seemed to fill out overnight. They grew taller and taller, but had very few blooms. Now it's the first of November and they have some flower buds, some bolls ready to open, and still have the cotton bolls that opened in July.  You can see some of that cotton on a plant about five feet left of me.

In the almost forty years we have lived in cotton country, I don't remember ever seeing this happen.  I don't know much about cotton, (which is why farmers don't consult me), but it will be interesting to see what happens next with these plants.  It's time to start planting wheat too, and yet still too wet to get into the fields.  I hope they all had insurance this year.

Farming is risky and stressful and for most, has a small profit margin.  But farmers are a rare breed of optimists.  They can lose money on crops one year do it all over again the next year.

This is my "farmer", getting the hay moved before the storm.  Even though the hay started growing again after the rain, and everyone got a second cutting, cattle ranchers had already been feeding the winter stockpile, so many are still looking for enough hay to get their herds through the winter.  We saw a sign yesterday: Coastal $95 per round bale.  Time to plant coastal!

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I've been asked by a couple of people why I haven't been blogging as much and if I am moving over to Instagram with them.  No, I'm not going to close my blog.  I do have an Instagram account but seldom think to post to it.  I'll try to do better.  I haven't been blogging as much because I've been having more vision problems for the last few months.  Turns out I have thyroid eye disease, aka Graves Eye Disease.  My eyes burn, my near vision is worse, and it hurts to move my eyes, so I haven't been doing much more than I have to do lately.  I've got enough doctor appointments in the next three months to keep them employed, and hopefully, we'll find a solution.