Old cottonfields

[Peanut]

I also remember the cotton seed mounds , out behind the gin.

Hardest working man I've ever known.

Jim

At the cotton gin trash from cotton, leaves, seeds etc separated from the cotton was blown thru pipes into a pasture behind the building (cousin’s pasture). A lot of fine cotton lint was blown out also. At night that pasture looked white. The only restroom at the gin were a few trees in that pasture.

One very cold night I started down to the trees, stepped across the fence. The ground was sloped and uneven, piles of cotton seeds all covered in cotton lint. I came to a white mound and tried to step across it, couldn’t tell what it was… until it got up and ran! It was a big calf, about 800lbs, and I was sitting on it backwards!!! I was bucked off after a couple jumps. Scared the carp out of me! Didn’t get hurt thankfully.

What I didn’t know was that my cousin had turned his cattle into the pasture that day. Those big pipes also blew out heated air from the cotton dryers and the cattle found a nice warm place to sleep. Covered with cotton lint at night they looked like big bumps on the ground, looked like anything but cattle.

 

[Pearl]

In my area of North Texas the cotton fields were killed off with arsenic. There are still problems today with horses and livestock being sick or killed by the residual arsenic!!

 

[Peanut]

Usda strikes again! They pushed DDT on farmers for decades. There was a 5lb tin of ddt in our shop when I was a kid. We didn't use it but was left over.

My dad once told me about dusting cotton with ddt when he was a kid. It was during ww2, he was about 9. Had to do it at night because of summer heat. He wore a rag over his mouth as a respirator. He walked down the rows spreading powder by hand. (man is 88yrs old, blessed)

These days I'm very careful about where I harvest wild medicinal plants. Much of my area was in cotton. Here the soil is sandy loam, prone to erosion so fields were terraced. So even if I'm in a forest tomorrow, it's easy to tell if that forest had been a cotton field at one time. I ask around and check out the history of a place before I harvest a medicinal.

Here is the very field my dad worked. It's been a hayfield since about 1980. You can just make out the old terraces in the grass.

 

[phideaux]

@Peanut , trying to remember,
Did some folks feed ginned cotton seeds to hogs and cattle?

Jim

 

[Peanut]

@Peanut , trying to remember,
Did some folks feed ginned cotton seeds to hogs and cattle?

Jim

Cottonseed is a good cattle feed supplement. It was used when I was young and now. Seeds were ground into a course powder. It was called "Cottonseed Meal", like cornmeal.

I've been trying to remember the details for a while. I know some farmers wanted the seed from their cotton. But I also remember some didn't. Much of trash blown out the big pipes behind the gin was the hulls from cotton seed. I simply don't remember the details of what happened at the gin.

Here's excerpts from an Auburn extension office document.

---------------------------------------------
Whole Cottonseed Use in Beef Cattle Diets
December 6, 2019 Posted by: Luke Jacobs, Kim Mullenix, and Steve Brown

Nutritive Value of Whole Cottonseed
...Whole cottonseed is known to be a good source of energy, fat, fiber, and protein. On average, whole cottonseed contains 96 percent total digestible nutrients (TDN), 17 percent fat, 21 percent crude fiber, and 24 percent crude protein on a dry matter basis. Whole cottonseed is relatively low in calcium (0.16 percent) and is a good source of phosphorus (0.75 percent).

Seed quality may vary depending on the cotton variety, seed source, or any heat damage incurred during storage. Seed quality also can be adversely affected by field weathering—particularly rainfall and high humidity coupled with warm temperatures—during the latter part of the growing season and harvest. To accurately determine the nutritive value of whole cottonseed, a feed analysis should be performed...

Summary
...Feeding whole cottonseed can be an effective way to supplement energy, fat, and protein to beef cattle. Due to the relatively limited processing and handling methods required, it can be easily accessed and utilized by producers.

After an acclimation period, whole cottonseed may be fed to cattle at multiple stages of production. With proper management and feeding practices, producers can limit negative impacts from overconsumption of fat and reduce the potential for gossypol toxicosis...

https://www.aces.edu/blog/topics/beef/whole-cottonseed-use-in-beef-cattle-diets/

 

[phideaux]

I think my grampa would get his truck full and feed it in the feed troughs with corn.

Hard to remember some things.

Jim

 

[Peanut]

We'd take corn and hay to the mill to be crushed into feed. For added costs we could add things like molasses, various supplements. I remember having cottonseed meal added to our mix. We used it as did many other farmers for livestock feed.

These days we buy protein "supplement" in 25g tubs or 2000lb totes. There is some leeway with additives added to the large totes. But at the end of the day I don't know every detail about whats in it (like everything else we buy).

I sometimes see the old guy who owned the cotton gin. He can clear up this matter with details. I asked him last fall about photos taken at the gin. He only remembered photos of red cotton.

Back in the 1990's growers experimented with cotton that wasn't naturally white. The thought being... if a farmer can grow blue cotton its ready for making bluejeans. I saw green/yellow cotton near Bakersfield ca once. I stopped by a farmers field for a closer look. That all fizzled out, didn't catch on with cloth producers.

 

[Chaosdawn]

Back in the 1990's growers experimented with cotton that wasn't naturally white. The thought being... if a farmer can grow blue cotton its ready for making bluejeans. I saw green/yellow cotton near Bakersfield ca once. I stopped by a farmers field for a closer look. That all fizzled out, didn't catch on with cloth producers.

This whole thread is fascinating since I didn't grow up on/near a farm, but this in particular is interesting. I'll need to look more into that.

 

[Tim Horton]

As a kid I remember playing with the kids of the family from north Texas who came through doing custom combine work... As well as the kids of the Mexican family who did sheep sheering.. Either group would kind of head quarter at our place and work at other neighbor places while in our area..

The old Gleaner combine would cut an end row.. Mr Weltie would say to my grandpa ....looks a little green yet Gilbert... An inch or less of green stalk at ground level.. Grandpa would say ...get after it.... and the work was on...

Dad, grandpa, my uncle would drive trucks... Sometimes my mom drove truck if my uncle was helping Mr Weltie fix something or the like.. Sometimes some of the combine boys would help us milk or other chores while at our place.. Grandma and my aunt cooked for the harvest crew.. A real treat for me was to have lunch with the Mexican shearing crew..

At times I miss the lifestyle.... Maybe not the work...

 

[Acdoctor]

Cotton seed meal makes you heck of a good catfish bait when using baskets to catch them .
you can’t hardly find it around here anymore .

 

[joel]

Most of the cotton fields of my youth are growing parking lots & houses.

 

[LadyLocust]

Saw this and thought of y'all in this thread ~

 

[Peanut]

Ha! saw this today, perfect for this thread. I drive through this dirt road several times a year looking for medicinal plants. I never knew it had a name until the state put up signs a few years ago.

The funny part, it's not named after the cotton plant. Sometime in the 1840's a man whose last name was "Cotton" married into my family.

This spot was his farm, his descendants still live close by. My cousins, 8 times removed? I've heard the area referred to as the "cotton patch"... and just like everyone else for miles around they also farmed cotton.