[AT] IH Grain Binder

[David Bruce]

Charlie,

I don't think I have ever seen any cotton here but apparently at some 
point back in time some was grown.
A few years ago before I retired I frequently worked in the area between 
Wadesboro, NC and Cheraw, SC. In that area a lot of acreage was in cotton.

Historically this area was heavy in flue cured tobacco.  Two reasons 
that I can determine - a significant purchaser of tobacco in R J 
Reynolds in Winston-Salem and secondly relatively small acreage would 
provide sufficient income for a farm family for the year.  My grandpa 
had an allotment of just over 3 acres.  He also grew some corn, soybeans 
and sometimes some grain along with a cow, a mule some hogs and a small 
Allis Chalmers tractor (in my like a D-14 but previously a CA).  Later 
he added a second tractor - first an Allis B, then a little Ford (never 
knew which one) followed by a Ferguson TO-30.

As I reached high school graduation it was clear I did not have the base 
from which to leap into mode modern farming so with a scholarship in 
hand I took the route of college then working in the textile industry. 
My cousin who lives about a quarter mile from here tried to farm on the 
side but had the same issues.  Eventually, as a condition to getting a 
mortgage for his house, he quit any farming.

Today tobacco is still a big crop (maybe half what it was a decade ago) 
and the harvesting has been almost totally mechanized - using used 
equipment bought from Charlie's area as farming changed there as well. 
We also have numerous vineyards and wineries (there are at least 10 
within 20 miles of my house) most started with seed money from the 
Golden Leaf Foundation (money from the state's settlement with the major 
tobacco companies).

David
NW NC

On 10/3/2012 7:43 AM, charlie hill wrote:
> We only had cotton on the farm that one year and only a few acres of it.
> Daddy had to plant it because there was some sort of allotment we were going
> to loose if
> we didn't actually grow a crop.   I don't think it was a subsidy deal.  It
> was just that the farm had a cotton allotment that had to be grown every so
> often.   Folks here
> didn't grow cotton back then and I understand why.   That little patch we
> had was at best 2 or 3 acres and it took (if I remember right) 8 or 10
> people two days to pick it.
> There is a lot of cotton grown here now, now that there is modern equipment
> to farm it with.   For a few years in the late 80's-early 90's the guy that
> tended our place
> had the whole farm from hedge row to highway planted in cotton.   The farm
> has never been as clean and weed free as it was when planted in cotton.
>
> Charlie