On my way to the grocery store this morning I noticed that cotton picking as begun around here. We don't grow cotton on our place, but are surrounded by fields of cotton, soybeans and corn. Once all the cotton is picked the local farmers will harvest soybeans (corn was harvested in September).
One year I picked up a twig of cotton that had fallen off a trailer onto our driveway and sent it to a friend in Virginia. She's never seen a cotton field, or raw cotton and was very intrigued. She even shared it with her niece and nephew who took it to school for show and tell. I also sent some to a friend's son in California as he was doing a report on Mississippi and needed some "authentic Mississippi cotton" for his visual display.
Cotton is the third largest crop in Mississippi, with approximately 1.1 million acres planted in cotton each year. By the way, Mississippi has 30, 020, 454.4 acres of land. Obviously Mississippi isn't one big cotton field from Tennessee to the Gulf of Mexico!
The fields are very pretty in summer when the plants are green and even prettier this time of year when the cotton bolls open up fully. From a distance it looks like there's snow on the fields! On my way home for the grocery store I slowed down to snap the picture above of the field across the road from us. Isn't it pretty?
Aww, this post makes me a bit sad......We are usually surrounded by cotton & this time of year we have cotton bits blowing up in our yard.....All the fields now are dirt thanks to the fires & drought that has beat the life out of West Texas :(
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the picture......didn't think I'd ever miss the blooming cotton fields until they were gone...