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Kodachrome/cotton chopping

T

thurlow

Well-known Member
There seemed to be a misunderstanding of the term 'chopping cotton' in the prior thread. Before the use of chemicals became wide-spread, cotton was typically 'chopped' about 3 times, though it could've been more or less (it was also plowed about the same number of times). It was thinned the FIRST time it was chopped. There were dozens of weeds/grasses which had to be 'chopped', but the major ones for us were cockleburr, johnsongrass, bermuda grass and crab grass. A few miles away, they might've been different. I acknowledge that different terms have different meanings in different places. In addition to chopping, we planted, plowed, barred off, scraped, scratched, laid by, picked, pulled, cut stalks, etc...........and I've probably forgotten some; it's been a long time ago. A search of google images will show lots of pictures of people 'chopping cotton'.
chopping cotton
 
So, "chopping" was basically people going through the cotton fields with garden hoes killing weeds as I understand from your post. What was meant by "plowing"? Was that mechanical cultivation prior to the "chopping"? Either by horse/mule drawn cultivators or tractor mounted cultivators? In the upper midwest, for many years, "plowing" meant turning the soil over with a moldboard plow. Usually done before the crop was planted and again when the crop was finished at the end of the year. "Cultivating" was to kill the weeds between the rows. Done in the early part of the plant growth cycle. Nowadays, "plowing" has come to mean other things.
 
Guys, In the Panhandles(Tx,Ok) Farmers would have a Rouging Crews come in and cut out the Sucker heads, Shatter-Cane, Johnson Grass in Milo fields . It would eliminate the need for as much chemicals, for your weed,and noxious plant seed that made maturity was greatly decreased.
After a Rouging Crew would come through a Milo field it would be real showy almost look like a table top.
Later,
John A
 
Hi, this is quite interesting about the growing of cotton, additional information would be appreciated and what State(S) cotton is grown/harvested, also growing/harvesting of peanuts. Thanks, Murray
 
A friend's family in eastern Washington raised certified wheat seed- they "rogued" the wheat as well- bands of kids going through and pulling anything that wasn't wheat. What with modern chemicals, don't know whether they do that anymore.
 
i chopped cotton 1 day in alabama at the age of 16. me and a friend drove a 49 studebaker to the field. i had just started when the overseer came by and said, boy, do you know what cotton is? he then pointed to a weed and asked what is this, i replied cotton. no, its a jimson weed, chop it down. at the end of the day, sun burnt and bent over, i collected my $4.00 and never went back.
 
Thurlow,
You mentioned cockleburr. This made me think of my Iowa days in the early 1950s when dad bought a "Bare 80"(80A without bldgs) and it was infested with cockleburr. He decided I and my brother could help him go in the soybeans in July/August when the beans and cockleburrs were big and bushy and chop out those cockleburrs (we used a corn knife). Then he wanted us to drag them to the ends and pile them up so he could burn them later. It was a very hot and sticky job. We thought he was a sadist.

To add insult to injury, for whatever reason he delayed the burning, then hired a guy to combine the beans and the combine did a wonderful job of scattering cockleburr seeds everywhere.

I still have a special hate for cockleburrs. And when I look at the corn knife I have on the wall in my shed, those memories give me the shivers.
LA in WI
 
I grew up on a cotton-alfalfa farm and grandfather owned a gin. I and had plenty of time with a True Temper hoe in cotton fields. Chopping wasn't the worst job, unless it was 100 degree and sun beating down. Worst jobs were irrigating with aluminum siphon tubes, picking cotton by hand, smelling defoliant for days and cutting stalks with an old two row rotary bush hog behind a Super C. My favorite thing about cotton was watching the ginning and taking bales to the compress in Sweetwater, TX.

Anyone here ever had to pull Dodder out of alfalfa fields?
 
Hey Bill.......chopping was indeed as you've described. Plowing (after the crop emerged) was actually cultivating. Depending on the task/implement, it could be done (with a single mule) one-half row at a time, one 'middle'.....of a row.....at a time, one whole row (with a team of mules and a 'walking' cultivator) at a time. Later, there were tractor mounted front and/or rear cultivators in 1 to 8 row configurations. We also called the early Spring land preparation 'plowing', i.e. moldboard plowing with a one-horse or two-horse 'turning plow' (actually draft animals in my part of the world were almost exclusively mules), and later tractor-drawn breaking plows in 1 to 6 bottom sizes.
 
Thanks. I remember those one row walking cultivators but by the time I was growing up they had been replaced by a John Deere sulky cultivator that had pedals which enabled the rider/driver to widen or narrow the gangs on either side of the row it was straddling so as to get right up to the next row. That, in effect, made it almost a two row cultivator. I well remember my grandfather starting on one side of a 40 acre corn field with that setup and I would start on the other side with a 2 row cultivator mounted on a WC Allis. I would always beat him to the middle because he would stop to rest the horses every two rounds (one mile). But we would make quick work of cultivating. We didn't have mules nor did any of our neighbors. I remember the shocked look of an army buddy from the south when I told him we didn't have mules. He said: "YA'LL DON'T HAVE MULES??!!"
The real old timers said the biggest change they had seen in farming until the advent of tractors was the changeover from teams of oxen to horses.
 
My sis and I used to do that too. Chopping cockleburs out of the corn in July/August was like working a tropical jungle at best. If we got the corn walked we got to go to the county fair in August.Jim
 
you mean you didnt have a cotton slip?turned the ridges down after you planted in lister rows,,fun stuff there.you all ever slip some watermelon seed in the planter?the best watermelons in the world were the ones you picked up and ate while chopping cotton!I only found out last year there was a actual machine for chopping cotton.have you seen the price of cotton now? wow!,if i werent alergic to work,I would try growing some again.LOL
 
Kinda like tobacco, seems like every week you have to some'then to it and every 100 miles or so the terms change.

Dave
 
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