Cotton Harvest 2012

We are off and running. Typical cotton harvest. The first day or two we are getting the kinks out of the equipment.
   No matter how much we service and prepare the equipment, there are always things you cannot anticipate. Today and five cent cotter pin wore out down inside the shifter linkage---and there went an hour. Arrrgh.
   Of course, the week started off with rain. So, now we are a day behind. Rain happens. The weird thing is yesterday morning as I was checking the fields, I looked up and there was a rainbow over the coast range. No forecast of rain, but there was a beautiful rainbow.

   I look forward to seeing the awesome Fall sunsets. But, after thirty years of picking cotton, I have never seen a rainbow without rain.

   The cotton does look good.

But, there's a famous saying about chickens and eggs. We are only coming up on the halfway mark. There is still a long way to go. 

Counting Chickens…

By Paul H. Betancourt

Copyright October 2012

                Right now we are watching and waiting for the cotton to open up. This time of year, my banker will ask what our yields are going to be. My father –in-law will ask what our yields are going to be. It is easy to start doing back of the envelope calculations trying to figure out how we are going to land this year.

            There is a famous saying about not counting your chickens before they hatch. Things look good so far, but until I get the last bale picked and ginned I won’t know how the year looks.

            Years ago I had a field that was picture perfect. The cotton was open all the way to the top, all the way across the field- it picked 1006 pounds per acre. A few years later I had a ratty looking Pima cotton field. The neighbors teased me, the banker asked what the fiddle happened to the field, my father-in-law shook his head. That field picked over 1800 pounds per acre. You couldn’t tell by looking.

So,  it’s just another reason you have to build up patience on the farm. You just gotta sit and keep from counting those chickens, or gotten bolls before they hatch.

I hope Y'all have a great week.

P