Cotton Harvest

 

This post was originally written on October 15th 2022. 

One of the things I take special joy in is to know that Kern county where I live is one of the major cotton growing centers in the United States of America. It gives me a sense of keeping a connection with India.

 Cotton is the most ancient of all fibers known to mankind and is recognized to be first grown in India. Indus Valley archeologists recovered cloth fragments estimated to be from 3000 BC. Several wild cotton varieties are found worldwide. However it is not economically feasible to use due to problems related to their refinement. Genetic research and breeding has helped evolve varieties from wild cotton that are more process friendly. Five prominent varieties grown worldwide are Egyptian, Sea Island, American Pima, Asiatic and Upland.

The two varieties of cotton grown in the USA are Upland and Pima. Pima has the longer fiber length of the two.

Earlier this year I had posted pictures from my last 2-3 visits to the cotton field. The first one when the seeds were sown, second when the plants were tiny and third when there were flowers all over the fields. 25 weeks from the planting is when cotton is usually harvested. My instinct told me it must be now time for that. So Friday( Oct 14th) I contacted my friend, the cotton farmer. He told me they were almost wrapping up the harvest but the last portion was yet to be done. So the next morning we got up early to go catch a glimpse of the action.

What a rewarding visit that was! A large part of the field was completely done with the harvest. And yet a substantial portion was getting ready to follow suit. 

America has come a long way from the times when slaves were employed for hand picking cotton. In the present day the entire process from preparing the soil, planting the seeds and  fertilizing to picking the cotton and compressing it into modules before sending it to the ginning mills is mechanized. There were 3 specialized tractors in the field today that moved systematically through rows of the cotton plants collecting the ready produce. Each tractor had six choppers on its front, each cutting the tops off a single row of the cotton plants. Thus in one round six rows we’re getting cut and simultaneously collected through the suction mechanism inside the machine. The biggest surprise to me was to find that all the collected produce was automatically packed in the belly of the tractor with a thick plastic roll around it and after a couple of to and fro drives each vehicle would come out of the field and “deliver” the module from the back of its belly. It was pretty amazing to watch the entire process.  Earlier we had seen many of those large bundled modules of cotton balls covered in yellow plastic standing around the outside of the fields. Little did we imagine they were being packed inside those tractors. It was quite a learning experience on the field trip. 

From the cotton fields we stopped at the nearby ginning mill to see if the next process was also ongoing. However there was no activity there. I’m going to miss seeing the next exciting process where the seeds and trash will be separated from the cotton fibers and after several steps of purification the cotton will be packed into standardized bales and loaded onto trucks to be sent out to the ship yards for exports. May be next November! 

Along the drive we saw alfalfa grass harvested and bundled into tall haystacks. Alfalfa is one of the more lucrative crops. The hay is used for feeding cattle. 

In another field a lone worker was harvesting wheat with his tractor. 

A rural home on our way had an interesting horse rider exhibit as part of decoration for the upcoming occasion of Halloween. 

At another place we passed by some parked old rusty carriages on the railroad. It was tempting to stop and take pictures there. 

The morning had made me forget that this is the only weekend I have to pack for my trip to India. But it was totally worth the time spent outdoors. So refreshing to get out of the humdrum of daily work day. It was a day I will remember for a long time. A day in the fields of white gold!

Oh, and the cutest moment was to see tiny birds pick a few chunks of cotton fibers from the fields and fly away. We dream of how the soft cotton will transform into our dreamy sarees. For these little creatures the same fiber will create a cushion for their eggs and young ones to lay inside the nests.

Saree for the day had to be a cotton! A Kotpad in an earthy shade of maroon with one border white and another black. The blouse in khadi cotton with jamdani buttis woven into it. 

Part 2: 

This is a post continued from yesterday( October 15th)about cotton farming. So far this year I witnessed the farming stage in the lifecycle of cotton from preparing soil through planting to harvesting with its culmination into the large modules. Each module contains nearly 15-17 bales. A bale is the ultimate unit of measurement of cotton production. It is standardized and averages about 480 lbs. 

The modules we saw yesterday will likely sit on the field for several days before the ginning mills are ready to pick them up. They may even remain in the mill’s yards for a few more days before going through the next processing.

A gin is essentially a machine developed to separate the seed from the cotton fibers. The shorter fibers of the staple( upland) variety are removed by saw gins. The Pima variety with longer fibers requires a roller gin. Incidentally the first ever roller gin was made in India. Present day varieties are simple modifications of that model. The gin pulls on the fibers and the seeds fall off due to their size and weight. 

The seeds make up 2/3rds the weight of the produce. They are sent out to factories that make cottonseed oil. The oil is used in making of snacks, chips, cookies etc. Residue from the seeds, with or without oil extraction is used to feed cattle, chicken and fish. Or even used in fertilizers. It makes perfect sense that all these factories are located in close vicinity of the cotton farms. Within a few miles radius I am able to visit the fields, the ginning mills, Frito Lay( the maker of potato and other chips) as well as the fertilizer company. Cattle farms are in the same area as are the alfalfa and potato farms. These are all interdependent businesses. 

Yesterday at the cotton field a lot of byproduct of the harvesting was lying around everywhere. I had picked up a couple of twigs with the cotton bolles and brought them home. This morning tried to “pick” the cotton out of it to see first hand how the workers would do it in the pre-mechanization era. Seemingly easy yet time consuming job it was to pull the cotton fibers off the seeds and separate other impurities that were entangled in the fibers. Each flower had nearly 30 seeds and each seed is known to have between 10,000 to 20,000 fibers attached to it. In the comments look for the pictures of the twigs before and after I pulled them apart.

Earlier in the morning I had just got done with my weekly spiritual zoom lecture and was in that frame of mind as I employed my hands quite casually to pick the cotton. A rather simple and seemingly non specific task flashed an unexpected lesson in philosophy to me.

 The raw twigs with the cotton and seeds within them is my life, as is , with everything included in it. The pure cotton fibers stand for the essence of life, the spiritual goal that I aim for. The seeds are byproducts during the quest for the ultimate goal. And there were definite impurities which were to be discarded. Apart from these 3 categories there was one more in front of me. A clump of cotton fibers mixed with so many impurities that it seemed worthless to sort out and retrieve anything worthwhile from it without spending time. 

In search of self realization, call it meeting one’s own soul ( Aham Brahmasmi) ( sat-chit-ananda) or one’s creator( Ishvar) or the Universal Being ( Sarva Khalvidam Brahma) the seeker in me keeps walking in the direction wherever life takes me. The byproducts of the journey, like the cotton seeds, are the friends and relationships that are created in due course as well as the material knowledge and skills, and to lesser extent the material objects of practical use that are acquired. With maturity comes the automatic discarding of things that are of no use, whether certain ways of thinking or spending time on certain activities or spending money on physical objects that once seemed attractive. And then that rather messy clump which has something valuable in it but you can’t easily disentangle it from impurities. You can’t easily dump it nor resolve it. It just sits there staring at you from time to time as you go about focusing on more important things. Some traumas that left scars deep inside, some relationships that seem to be beyond repair, some shortcomings that are hard to overcome even though they embarrass you and you really want them to disappear. 

As I mused over these things my hands kept working. At the end of it I had done a fairly good job of separating a substantial amount of cotton from that initial raw material that I had started with. The seeds smiled at me as they affirmed their separate identity and purpose. And I couldn’t believe myself that despite the initial intimidation I had experienced looking at the messy ball left aside I actually had picked out quite a decent amount of usable cotton fibers from it and got rid of thousands of specks of impurities from it at the end. 

Not bad at all ! I guess I’ll just take a cue and keep going on. Somewhere it will all fall in place……