... last week, when I went south to Florida on Friday, most of the scenery was either wooded or agriculture. Lots of undeveloped land, with nothing but trees and underbrush, areas that appear to have never been used for crops, though it does not take such a long time for nature to regain a hold on farm land that is not kept cleared, plowed and planted. Most of the land that is farmed is planted in corn, soybeans or cotton, though I still occasionally see a field of tobacco. Tobacco farmers have probably been paid by the government to not plant for so long, it is pretty rare to find anyone growing it in south Georgia.
The corn I have seen this summer has appeared to be a very healthy, productive, lots of ears on each stalk. Meaning it looks like it has been a good growing season with plenty of rain, so it would be profitable to grow. But on the other hand, if there is a glut on the market from so many farming families having successful seasons in the corn market, the value at harvest time will be suppressed, and there will be little profit after expenses are paid. I've always thought it to be a hard life, struggling to make ends meet, dependent on the weather, while you have to admire anyone who is willing to put that much labor into making a livelihood, you can also question the sanity of doing it for a living. Was it Einstein who defined stupidity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?
Corn crops have looked good over the summer as I have driven back and forth to and from south Georgia. And cotton is looking good as well. There are lots of things I cannot identify when traveling the highways, but once they get established I do know what soybeans, peanuts growing low to the earth and cotton look like. Coming from a family that was dependent on the success of farm families who would choose to take a chance on growing cotton, I can appreciate the view of a field full of cotton plants in bloom. In the same way that food crops are dependent on pollinators, the flowers of a cotton plant also need bees and butterflies to come along and do what they do, spreading pollen from one bloom to the next. The blooms are actually quite pretty, though you would never see them as cut flowers: that is the part that turns into a cash crop, making the cotton boll the farmers need for harvesting to sell in bales at market.
I always, never fail to think of my dad when I travel the roads of Georgia and see cotton plants growing, blooming, producing in the summer. And in the fall, when the leaves die off, as the fields look snow-covered from a distance. Driving across the south, you look out across the landscape where you see the impossible illusion of a field covered in white: how can that possibly be snow in this late summer heat? It makes me remember my dad, and all those years he supported a family by operating a cotton gin, providing the service to small family farms who depended on him to help them get their crops to market.
After he died, I would see cotton growing as I drove the highways and call my brother to tell him I was thinking about our dad. Wishing I could call and chat with the guy who said that hot, exhausting, dirty, work was the best job he ever had. In the last year of his life, when we talked and I asked him but a few of the many questions I wished to know answers for, he told me that if he could have he would have done the grimy, stressful, demanding work much longer. I was so surprised to hear that. But know how much he valued hard work, and the character building aspects of putting in good honest labor for the benefits and rewards of a job well done.
There's no one left to call and talk about seeing cotton growing in the South. They are all gone. Cotton is making a comeback, and seems to be a good cash crop in this part of the country. But I am sad that the people who I knew who sweated and swore up in the miserable August heat of the tin-roofed gin house are all gone, and none left to talk about cotton gins before the era of computers and electronic trouble shooting.
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