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

Just about anyone could chop or hoe cotton, but when it came picking time, that's when you separated the 'men from the boys', so to speak. I was just a kid, and only picked a few times, so I never was good at it. I've seen and heard of people picking a bale and more in a day. That's right at 500 lbs. To do that, you had to be in good cotton, have fast hands, and a strong back. The avg. person picked about 350ish lbs in a day.

I hauled a lot of hay, 10 cents a bail, stacked in the barn. That’s ten cents split 3 ways. We could make enough to take our girlfriends out on Saturday night.

I thought I was rich as a 13 year old (1993), 7 cents a bale (my share), hauling for a cousin. His truck, him, and another neighbor kid. Stacking in the hay barn wasn't bad, but stacking in the hayloft was miserable. 1,000-1,200 bails a day was our norm. Hauled some for another guy in town, just him and I, 12 cents a bale. Big time money.

No but I wish our forefathers had picked their own damn cotton….

We did not get paid to toss and stack hay. We were expected to do it. Family.

The vast majority of mine did!!!

Picked cotton, chopped cotton, hoed cotton. Hauled baled hay, put up loose hay with a pitch fork, and mowed and raked hay with a team of mules. miles

Bustin’ them clods with his own bar feet! 😁.

That mule, old Rivers, and Miles!

Jokin’ with ya dis mornin’ !

If that ain't country....it'll hairlip the Pope.

One of the fun things I did was dehorn dairy cows. Got coved up in blood

my dad and his siblings chopped, hoed and picked. i knew kids who did. dad told me whatever i chose to make a living, make sure it had nothing to do with cotton. i took him at his word ...

I went to Taco Bell and burned some cotton a couple hrs later

You guys are all liars. Nobody ever had to pick cotton but black slaves. You white boys just drove around in fancy cars and drank beer. Entitled!

No cotton, all tobacco. And that monster garden my mother forced us all to participate in as well.

I dreaded the garden much more when it came to weeds. Mom won't having any slackers in her garden.

Yep.
All 3.

ETA:
A good friend told me he went to the city and got a good job in a paper mill, wrote home and told his momma about it and asked her to send him his tools.

4 days later a hoe, jug of water and a tote sack arrived at the boarding house for him.

Is it any different than hoeing onions, or sugar beets, or hoeing corrugations in irrigated silage corn?

Use to work for a fellow that would buy from 500-1000 calves every fall and put them on rye grass. All of them had to be 'run thru the pens'. That meant shots, dehorn, and bull calves were cut. Usually a 3 man crew and you did this 2-3 days a week, for a month or two. We would swap jobs and dehorning was definitely the worse. Cut the horns and blood would spurt all over you, from head to toe.

Fun..... not so sure about that!

There was no cotton or tobacco where I grew up. But we had corn.
My dad grew up without a corn picker so he had to pick corn by hand. But, about everybody did it that way until after WWII. When we came along and moved to a farm in 1962 we had to hand pick corn from the stocks in the field. We put the ears in a wagon and would run them through the hammer mill or feed the cows and pigs whole corn. The neighbors had a corn picker so dad contracted with them to pick it and we put it in a corn crib. We would fill the wagon from the corn crib and run it through a hammer mill for the cows feed.

I came home from the Army in 1976 and the corn crib, barn, hammer mill and the feed shed were all gone. Dad was going to put up a big loafing shed and buy milled corn from the feed and grain and feed it out in a cattle lot and run the cows in the pasture when it wasn't too dry or too cold. Unfortunately he passed from a heart attack in 1978 and never got the chance.

kwg

Yes, on my maternal grandfather's farm outside Batesville, Arkansas. Worked hay fields tossing bales in north central Arkansas. Taught me I did not want to be a farmer.

L.W.

No, but it's says something about those who did. Chopping just makes more weeds anyway.