Thursday, November 27, 2008

Thanksgiving on the Farm

Thankful for another bountiful harvest!

Beautiful........Fluffy.............White............on it's way to becoming a fat quarter.


Steaks and shrimp cooked out with fellow farmer friends who just came to help.




The green harvest beast!




The green harvest beast is full, must dump out into smaller mo-bile red harvest beast.





Red mo-bile harvest beast on the move.






Red m0-bile harvest beast feeding the gold cotton packer...( techo term "module builder" ).







Gold cotton packer gets fed about 6 times. Cotton gets mashed and compressed between dumps.








Gold cotton packer is full....opens it's mouth and "belches" out a "cotton module".









Cotton modules usually hold about 12 bales of cotton.....a bale is approx. 480 lbs. of cotton.










Cute Victoria standing next to cotton module...these modules are compressed..hard to the touch.










Our "rowdy" farmers...Mr. Brown Dirt there in the middle..right- Willie...our ace no.1 farm hand.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~YES.....WE ARE THANKFUL~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~











33 comments:

  1. reminds me of the sugar beet harvest. congrats on bringing the crop in. happy thanksgiving.

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  2. This is not your ordinary Thanksgiving celebration but it sure looks like a nice one; the weather couldn’t have been more perfect!
    My favorite time is planting time; when you see all the different colors of dirt in the fields. It always makes me want to do a scenery quilt of fields and tractors but I am not an artist so I don’t think I will ever make one.
    P.S. This was a great idea for a blog entry.

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  3. I would like to place my order for about 35 of those fat quarters, assorted colors will do.
    Congratulation on having such a bountiful harvest. It was nice to see the cotton go from that nice pink flowere to this large cotton bale.

    BTW Still waiting... for you to show me yours...*LOL*

    Was that you in the green sweater and the pony tail? Haven't seen a ponytail that long in a long, long while.

    Later gator

    ~~Fran...:c)

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  4. So you are the one making all that cotton fabric for us. LOL. Looks like fun, and a lot of hard work too.

    Happy Thanksgiving

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  5. Thanks for the informational post! I've never seen that before, and it is very interesting. All those machines must cost a lot of money, tho'

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  6. I hadn't realized ya'all were cotton farmers. How cool is that for a quilter. fun to see how it all works - thanks.

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  7. We don't have cotton fields in Ohio.. so this was a real treat! Thank you so much Belinda for showing us.
    Glad you got to eat outside!

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  8. Thank you for making more fat quarters for me! Don't know what I'd do without cotton.

    Steak and shrimp sounds delicious.

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  9. This was a really interesting post! You don't often think about where the cotton fabric you buy in the shops come from... and I've never seen a cotton field before. Very interesting indeed!

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  10. That was wonderful Belinda. We don't grow cotton in England so this was such a rare treat for me to see.

    I couldn't get my head around the quantities involved- so big. I kept thinking- "so how many FQs is that"? LOL

    Thank you for sharing your harvest.

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  11. so COOL to see where all that lovely fabric begins. congrats on the harvest!

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  12. Very ineteresting. Can't wait for it to make it to the fat quarter stage. Thanks for all your family's work in moving toward that direction.

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  13. I remember the days of dragging a huge bag behind me while picking cotton by hand.
    Those machines sure have made life easier.

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  14. I absolutely love a field of cotton! It looks like snow.

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  15. Thats cool! Now I need to go buy fabric so you stay in business!

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  16. Great Post! I remember all those cotton fields when I use to visit my Dad in Amarillo when I was a little girl. The process is almost as beautiful as the full fields of cotton.
    Congrats on a good harvest. Keep it coming, we need it.

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  17. Praise God for your bountiful harvest.

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  18. How cool for you to show all of us quilters just where all that cotton fabric comes from! And the harvest process is a far cry from what my Mom did in Mississippi as a child in the 1920's & 30's, hand picking cotton. She would be totally amazed. Thanks for the photo essay!

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  19. What a unique and lovely way to spend Thanksgiving. The cotton is beautiful - all natural and ready to process.

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  20. I loved this post. Thank you for sharing with us the process you go through so we can have our cotton fabric in the end. Most of my clothing is cotton too! It's the fabric I feel most comfortable wearing.

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  21. Congratulations on getting your crop in--and thank you for sharing photos. I've never seen a cotton harvest, and that is sad, because cotton is such a big part of my life!


    --Barbara

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  22. hey I feel it our job to spread the farming life to those who never see it.........great post.........poeple always love it when I post farm stuff.........

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  23. oh and the farm works stops for no one........

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  24. Wonderful post. It's amazing watching how it is "picked" these days when you think surely it wasn't that long ago when it was picked by hand.

    What a wonderful way to spend Thanksgiving.

    Thanks for sharing.

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  25. Cotton picking has come a long way from the hand picked days, same as our corn and beans in IL. I am glad to see how it is done now, as I am a farm girl away from the farm for 50 years.

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  26. Great post and pics. How mant fat quarters to a module???? I can dream can't I. Off to read some more of your blog, I just discovered you. Julie

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  27. Happy Thanksgiving! And thanks for the picks, congrats on the harvest.

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  28. Wow! I'm in shock. If you posted these pictures during harvest that would mean that your harvest season is about 2 1/2 mnoths after ours in South TX. We finished picking in Oct. Interesting! I'm loving your blog!!! Have a Great Christmas!

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  29. That was soooo cool! Thanks for sharing the process! Who knew?

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  30. I have never seen that before, we have cornfields in IL. White, soft, fluffy, balls of fun. Thank you for doing all that hard work so we can enjoy the "fruits" of your labor. I love your blog and need a cup of hot coco, and an hour or so to really enjoy it all. I am adding you to my google reader so I do not miss anything. BTW, I am sooo jealous of the red/white quilt top. I'll be back!!!!

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  31. Boy, a little different than when I used to visit my grandparents when I was a kid. We saw the cotton being picked by hand and taken to the gin, which my grandfather watched after on the weekends. We would play in the cotton seeds, but only with supervision because you could suffocate in them easily, I guess. Time marches on, progress for sure. Being a West Coast girl, I marveled at this everytime I visited New Mexico, where they lived. I like the part of it that I enjoy now more (quilting), but memories are great.

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  32. Looks a lot like N.E. Lousiana!

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  33. We live on the western Florida panhandle, and I just *love* drives through southern Alabama when the cotton fields are ripe for harvest - so very pretty. And seeing those modules out in the fields is something else. Pretty cool to stumble across a quilt blogger who lives that life. :D

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