West Texas Cotton Harvest

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Dayphoto

As I understand it….. ( have so many photos I’m having a hard time picking out just a few 🙂 )

Cotton is not PICKED in this part of Texas—it is stripped. Which means the whole plant is picked all at once with a stripping machine. The machine works just like most combines, picking off the bolls (and the leaves and any other part of the plant) selecting the cotton and spitting out the trash…leaves, sticks and the dried boll.

The deep south the cotton picking machine only picks the ready bolls and then they come back and pick the bolls that are ripe again, doing this until all the bolls have bloomed and picked.

When the hopper gets full a cotton buggy comes and picks up the load.

This is the cotton buggy. It is not full at the time of the this photo. It will be too the top when full.

Then the cotton buggy takes the load back to the module maker.

Here the buggy is dumping into the module maker.

The module maker smashes the cotton balls into a tight fitting well pack module.

When the module maker is good and tight– a tarp is put over the top of the module to keep the cotton from blowing away and seal it off from rain. Here Terry is helping Roy, the farmer, and his helper get the tarp ready for this module.

Here is another module being covered. The module maker is pulled away and the tarp is pulled on. Pretty slick, if you ask me.

Finished! They are tying it on at this point.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about the cotton gin.

Our corn is ready for harvest. Moisture content is 14.3% so we start tomorrow.

Today we have to put in a new hot water heater as ours went out last night. 😦 Sigh.

Linda

Away and Back Again

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Dayphoto

We took a short break (four days) and headed to the plains of west Texas for the Cotton Harvest.

Terry and I have always wanted to see a cotton harvest so a really wonderful blog friend, emailed and said: “COME ON DOWN! We have started harvest!”

Since she owns huge farms, of which she sharecrops out, she talked to her renter to see if we could come watch the harvest. He also said “Come on Down!”

So we did!

We started out in a huge snow storm.

The following is a series of photos as we crossed the Million Dollar Highway into Durango.

This is part of the Million Dollar….

Here is a snow tunnel in a huge avalance area. Several people have lost thier lives at this place. The snow tunnel works like magic.

This is Silverton. There are three passes from our house to Durango, Colorado….Million Dollar, Molas and Coalbank.

The views are amazing and the roads were a mess.

But from Durango on into New Mexico we had good weather and dry highways.

This is New Mexico.

The wind started blowing in the afternoon of the day before we left the plains of west Texas, so going home we drove all the way through Oklahoma into Colorado in a huge dust storm.

Then back at the mountains we drove home again in another storm.

But we are back now.

The corn is starting to be harvested around us so Terry is on his way to have the corn tested to see if we can start.

I’ll blog about the harvest tomorrow.

Linda

—Sunday Stills Challenge—In the Dark

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Dayphoto

The Sunday Stills Challenge is In the Dark….I was going to do this for Halloween, but I realized this would work well here.

Linda

The West Side Story–Wordless Wednesday

Posted on November 2, 2011 by Dayphoto

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Linda

November 1, 2011

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Dayphoto

When out checking the corn …it’s still too wet, running around 22 and it needs to get to 14

We found the coyote den, well actually the grandkids found it first, but Terry and I had to go check it out

They’ve left the area, but we are sure they will return. Of course having them so close to the equipment is not good….

We saw a lone little butterfly fueling up for it’s flight going south

Back in the yard a very busy bumble bee was working over the last of the flowers. (I so enjoy bumble bees!)

The chickens were busy eating all the nasty grasshoppers, which tickled me.

The weather has cooled some here, but I’m still determined to enjoy every last ray of autumn light that I can. November 6th the time changes, which I dread!

Linda

Happy Halloween

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Dayphoto

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Hope Everyone has a really good spooky time!

Linda

Sunday Stills- Steps

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Dayphoto

The Sunday Stills assigment–go to the site for complete instructions— was “take 25 steps and then take three photos of what you are looking upon

This is the canal that provides irrigation water to our place

I didn’t put in three. As you can see the water is running clear.

Then take 50 steps and repeat the process

This is water as it flows under the bridge to our farm.

This time next week the water will be turned off. Come March it will come back on, until then the canal will be dry.

This was a fun Sunday Stills assigment!

Linda

Wordless Wednesday

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Dayphoto

(Love that they are back…just love it!)

Linda

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Dayphoto

I’m not sure where to start…we are still laying transmission pipe, we have 160 feet laid and have 120 feet more to go.

Of course it would probably go faster if we had a back hoe, but we don’t. First Terry makes a ditch, then the last several inches are dug out by hand, the pipe laid then we cover it up. This is such a job I keep wondering if it is going to be worth it when we are done.

Still something has to be done…the tile line laid in 1920 is starting to have huge issues, like breaking and flaking off causing the tile to plug up. We had a nasty mess in one of the corners this year which proved it was TIME to lay new pipe.

We will gradually get it done…shoot only 120 more feet, we are almost there!

Linda

Last Post on Our Trip to South Dakota

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Dayphoto

I’m taking a few mintues to get caught up on my blogging, before we start back up outside. We are re-roofing the west side of the house (one side a year), and we have been laying transmission pipe (160 feet so far with 120 more to go). We have to do it in stages…when you are old you work has hard as you always did, it just takes you longer to get ‘stuff’ done. 🙂

On top of everything I had an allegry attack and then caught a cold. Anyway, we are waiting for the frost to leave to get started again. I’m using the time to get caught up here.

The last of our little trip we drove through Custer State Park

to see the wildlife

And to admire this beautiful grassland

one more time before we left for

Nebraska!

Wayne drove all the back roads (county roads not on the Atlas 🙂 from the corner of Nebraska into Colorado to Greeley) which was really a kick.

We came across a wind farm (See the little windmill in the front) This gives you and idea of how HUGE (and nosiey) these wind machines really are.

Power pole in the foreground. Green energy only produces a tiny amount of our power…And this farm went on for miles and miles and miles.

We got in late but made it over to the Assisted Living Home to tell Terry’s and Carolyn’s (and Roger’s) Mom good-bye before we started to our home clear on the otherside of the Rocky Mountains.

We were gone 6 days, but we saw a lot.

Sure was fun,

Linda