Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Ever chopped cotton?

Just wondering how many old timers on here ever chopped cotton? I chopped cotton in the last 70's on my uncle's farm in southern Arkansas. Being 8 yrs old, it sucked! Found a bucket full of arrowheads though........

Yes, when I was a kid.

No, but I hear it's a great way to ditch your old fingerprints and get new ones!!

`late 60s early 70s

I never picked cotton
But my mother did and my brother did
And my sister did and my daddy died young
Workin' in the coal mine


(Actually it was my grandmother did and her brother did growing up in Arkansas)

😂😂😂😂 Good ole Johnny. He will never be matched.
Momma would rock me in the cradle in the old cotton fields down home!

No, but a lot of tabacco .

We called it hoeing cotton. And yes I hoed many a row in the hot summer sun as a kid.

Yep in the 70's for me too....keep your hoe sharp...

Still do some these days.

Seems that the guy that farms the home place does a darn good job of staying on top of the weeds.

picking cotton and chopping cotton are two different things have done both, picked watermelons also.

Yep. What folks call chopping cotton is hoeing the weeds out of the rows of cotton.

Chopping cotton and hoeing cotton are two different things. Chopping cotton is done first.... that is when you thin the plants. Hoeing cotton is getting the weeds out. You only chop cotton once, but you usually had to hoe the cotton at least twice and sometimes 3 times. Picked cotton by hand, too.

I did like to run the stripper late at night with a brite moon.

I would turn off the lights and still be able to run the rows with no problems.

Started with a yellow cab 484,then green cab484.

But when the 7445 with a cleaner came out it was fantastic.that machine could run real fast and eat the cotton without problems.

We started around 9 o'clock or so then quit sometimes around 1 or 2 in the morning.

Dont need a stripper when you pick by hand....

We never did that in N. Tx dryland Cotton farming. Rainfall was so scarce that we never had to worry about “thinning the plants”. But the weeds here grow big with little or no rainfall whatsoever. So we were always hoeing rows of cotton.
Thank God we never had to pick cotton, though. Dad used to tell ya how good we had it, since he had to pick cotton as a kid. 🤠

I wouldn't know about cotton farming in Tx., but in N. La. granddad planted the cotton close so he could make sure he got a good stand. Then when the plants were a couple inches tall we had to thin it or chop the cotton. After that, we had to hoe the cotton, remove the weeds, a couple of times. By then the cotton was tall enough that when he plowed the middles, he'd throw dirt onto the row and cover any grass. I remember one year Granddad planted some cotton that got close to 6' tall. Dont know what kind it was, but he only planted that variety one time. Mostly the cotton was 3'-4' tall.

Both hoed and picked cotton as a kid. Hoed corn for 8 cents a row. Long rows, sometimes with morning glory vines.

Yup. late 60s. Fisher County.