Learning about Cotton

 Robbie has family that live in Winchester, AR.  They are real life farmers!  I know that sounds dumb to say out loud....but they are the first people who earn their living solely from farming that I have ever met.  They grown corn, bean, and cotton for their livelihood!  That may not sound impressive...but WOW!  What I witnessed today was really cool! The amount of crop they grow, the machinery and the way technology has revolutionized farming is just so amazing!  Such a neat way to teach the kids about how we get cotton...something that we don't think about around our house too often anyway! Thank you Paul and Rachelle for this taking time to answer our questions and thank you Nonie and Poppa for taking to Winchester.

 Amazing cotton fields as far as the eye could see!  The kids got to pick some and we talked about how long it would take to pick this cotton field by hand.  Can you imagine that people really did that?  I know it sounds foolish for me to say that previous statment too...but considering how pokey and dense those bushes were....it must have been grueling and neverending work! Hard to believe people really did that for cotton!  Breaks my heart!  Hooray for cotton picking machines!

 

And then it was time to meet the cotton picking machine!  WOW!  We saw it last year packed in their garage...but had never seen it in action.   I said it then and I'll say it now!  It's as big as my house!  

We climed on board and got to ride it for several rows and watch the cotton be picked.  The view out the front window is pretty cool.  You can see our view in one of the pics below!  The glass goes all the way to the floor so it kinda looks like you are going to fall out!


If you look close, you can see Hudson sitting in Rob's lap in the picture below.

Fresh from the city ...but she still looks right at home on the farm doesn't she?! 

You can see the trailer filling up with cotton.  It fills up in about 3 rows.  It is all sophisticated.  Little dials show you what percent your trailer is full.  So you know when to stop and dump it.

Here is a close up of the spindles on the front of the machine that actually strip the cotton from the plants.

When the trailer gets full of cotton, it is dumped into another trailer truck and hauled off to the cotton module maker.  (Sound like I know what I'm talking about, don't I?)

Then that transport truck dumps it into the module maker.  Those cylinder looking things on top, move back and forth pressing down to compact the cotton.  (That's Lawson's head in the Polaris.  She is watching close!)

Once the module has been compacted and is full to the top, they drive they yellow frame forward and left behind in the cotton module!  Just need to tarp it now!

And there she is!

Lawson is giving us some perspective on how big a cotton module is. 

You can make approximately 28,000 t-shirts from one cotton module.

The kids each brought home some of the cotton they picked.  When we got home, I printed out these pics for each of the kids and made them little cotton books to take to school the next day.  They were excited to share what they learned with their friends.

I stuck this picture on there for the kids...it was one of the highlights of the day for them!  This dog followed us around the farm all day.  He would run as fast as our four wheelers could drive. We tried to lose him for the longest time and then just learned to love him.  Lawson took this pic.