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Friday, November 16, 2012

In High Cotton

 
I took a road trip recently through
the southern US.  Somewhere in Missouri
I looked up and the fields seemed to have
a haze or mist over them, I realized it was
a field of cotton.  The first I have ever seen!
 
 
In the South, you will often hear
that one is "in high cotton".  This
means they have good luck, good
fortune or prosperity.  Some say
this goes back to the days when
cotton was picked by hand and if
the cotton was high, the pickers
did not have to stoop as much and
it was much easier to pick.
 
Isn't that cotton flower just beautiful?
 
 
This is what the cotton boll looks
like while still on the plant.
 
 
These are some bolls we found on the
ground showing the boll closed, slightly
open and just about to burst.
 
 
Then the cotton bursts from the boll.
It reminded us of "cotton" candy.
 
 
This shows one of the seeds in the cotton.
Prior to the cotton gin, all the seeds needed
to be removed by hand.  It is very hard to
get the seeds out of that fiber.  It would
have been a very time consuming process.
 
 
There are still over 18,000 cotton farmers
in the USA.  But we are not the biggest
producers.  China and India are ahead of us.
 
 
This is a cotton picker in the field. 
 
I wonder how the meaning of the phrase
"cotton picking minute" changed, once the
chore was done by machine?
 
 
We saw these huge bales of cotton
lined up in fields through state after state.
 
As a quilter I work with cotton everyday, I
suppose you could say I've taken a cotton
to it...
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1 comment:

  1. You took some beautiful photos of the cotton fields and cotton plants. I've heard they are thorny. Did you notice? Thanks for sharing the link to this post. I appreciate it.

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