Note – This post was originally a Page for the Grandkids. To see the content of those pages and more click on the tag “Grandkids”.
Cotton is an important crop that requires special equipment to pick, load and
First – Picking the cotton with a machine that also bails it. The bales weigh about 5,000 pounds. That is a lot heavier than your car.
Watch this video of the cotton picker in action. He goes back and forth until a bale is made. Then, the back of the machine opens, the completed bale is rolled to a carrier to ride to the edge of the field. The picker continues picking cotton and starts building a new bale. Once the machine gets to the edge of the field it turns around and drops the completed bale as you see in this video.
Next – The large round bales are loaded on an 18-wheeler. The 18-wheeler then hauls them to the cotton gin where the seeds are removed.
Next – The cotton stalks are mowed down and grass seed and fertilizer is spread–by the white truck–and tilled into the soil by the green tractor.
How many tee shirts or towels will one of the bales of cotton make? One bale is enough cotton for 24,000 child-size T-shirts or 6,900 bath towels. As they harvested 38 bales from our and Aunt Peggy’s and Uncle Frank’s field that could make over 900,000 children’s Tee shirts.
