Harvest rains.

I've been a little confused, no not confused, I'd rather say mixed up for a couple of days. Anyway I'm back.

This is a rainy Saturday. A good day to read a book or watch football on television. Or better yet watch a good movie and eat popcorn. All are good ideas. Any way it's a good day to relax.

When I was a kid living on the farm, rainy weather meant we could stay at the house and do the chores around there. My dad would have a long face because the fluffy white cotton was getting wet.The rain stained the white bolls of cotton and that lowered the price he could get for it. We didn't have mechanical pickers then, all the cotton was picked by hand. It was a hard tedious job, but we had to do it. My dad would hire pickers to get his cotton crop picked.

Everybody had their own cotton sack. My mon would sew them on her sewing machine. The sack was a long tube with a strap to go around your shoulder. You picked the fluffy cotton out of the bolls and put in the sack. You pulled the sack along as you moved down the rows of cotton. When the sack got full you took it to the wagon and had it weighed. Then it was emptied into the wagon. My dad kept records and when the weigh reached enough for a bale, the wagon with cotton was taken to the gin to be processed.

When we lived in the cotton country several years ago, harvesting cotton was a different story. The mechanical picker would start early in the morning and by sundown the field would be cleaned of cotton and modules of cotton bales would be lined up ready to be taken to the gin. Needless to say the operator of the picker enjoy listening to his radio, using his Iphone or whatever he could handle while he picked cotton.