It's About Cotton Pickin' Time!

We waited all summer for this!

He's getting positioned...right after grazing the power line to the house.

We've been watching the cotton grow from just a small plant (maybe a foot tall by the time we moved down here) to almost 4 feet tall and very healthy by the end of the summer.  Then they came over a month ago and sprayed it with defoliant to kill the leaves but not the bolls.

Recently it's been raining every couple or so days and they haven't been able to harvest.  As we watched the cotton sag on the plants and begin to drop off, we wondered if they were ever going to pick it.  A lot of farmers in this area don't have their own harvesters and have to rely on others, and their availability, to pick the cotton for them.

They actually started picking the cotton down the road yesterday, moving to the field behind our house last night.  What??!!!  We waited all summer and halfway through the fall and they're going to pick cotton at night?  When we newcomers can't see it?  Needless to say, Neta and I were not happy with this schedule.

We had errands to run last night and when we got home we could see the ghostly outlines in the moonlight of the bales in the back field, but at least the cotton in front of our house wasn't harvested yet.  Whew!

This morning, around 10:30 (farmers apparently keep easy work schedules -- I want to be one!) the combines showed up for the front field.  The first one entered the field, but the second one had something sticking up from the top and it hit the power line coming into our house.  It didn't knock it down, but it caused it to spark or something, setting off Sammie on a barking binge and causing just enough of a power flux that our internet router reset, in the middle of a client call that Neta was on (she uses a fancy Voice Over IP phone).  Internet outage by farm equipment.  That's life in the country.

But finally...we got to watch them pick cotton.

About time!!!

Here's something I did not realize about harvesting cotton.  Unlike picking corn, they strip the cotton from the plant, but the plant remains (somewhat) standing.

Oh yeah...and I know some of you may wonder if Neta and I are going to try to grow cotton -- as a hobby crop - on our farm, the answer is probably not.  You cannot grow cotton, not even for fun, in the state of Georgia without a permit.  You can thank Mr. Boll Weevil for that!


Here are a few other pictures from both the front and back fields showing the bales.

That's a lot of t-shirts!

Bales as far as the eye can see

Bringing it home!

This brings our curiosity about cotton farming to an end...until next year at planting time.

Wildlife camera

This is Neta again.  You can always tell if the post is from me; it will either be about cooking or gardening or just a bunch of pictures.  This time I've taken lazy to a new level: I didn't even take these pictures myself.

We got our wildlife camera when we were still in Virginia, but didn't use it much because all we ever got were pictures of Sammie running around the backyard.  Since we've been living the country life in Georgia we've gotten much more use out of it.  We've gotten some cool animal shots, but we also have a lot of shots of Craig or Robert on the lawn mower.

Eating pears off the tree

We try to move the camera around to different spots, but putting it under a pecan tree in Autumn turned out to be a mistake:  we got about a hundred shots of falling pecans.  

I'm not sure but this might be a chupacabre, 

This guy was in a hurry

This fox must have a den nearby - we got several shots of him

We get a lot of deer pictures, and even some Deere pictures...

This isn't creepy at all, right?

(dirt) road grader 

The Harvest Spirit

I've been getting into the harvest spirit, taking advantage of what we have available here at our rental house.  It started with Scuppernong grapes.  If you aren't familiar with them, Scuppernongs are a type of Muscadine grapes, which are pretty common in the South.  There are both white and purple varieties of Muscadines; Scuppernongs are a white variety, although they are actually more of a bronze color.  We're lucky enough to have two looooong trellises of grape vines at our rental house and I took full advantage of them.

Ripe Scuppernongs

Muscadines are large grapes with great flavor but tough skin.  Anyone who grew up eating them knows the best way to do it:  suck the fruit out of the skin, then spit out the seeds.  Southerners are a genteel bunch.  One of the most common things to make with the grapes is jelly, but we don't eat a whole lot of jelly (I prefer jam) so I wanted to do something different.  

Normal size grape vs. scuppernong

Most of the grapes I picked were turned into juice, but I got a little creative and pickled some of them too.  You read that right:  pickled grapes.  I was inspired by a recipe I found online and they turned out pretty tasty. 

This is the 2nd bucketful

Pickled Grapes - that's a bay leaf in the jar. 

After the grapes it was time for the pears.  We have one tree here at the rental house and one tree on the farm.  We wound up with a lot of pears from just those two trees, so I wound up doing a lot more with them.  I dried some, I made pear sauce, I canned some, and I made Belgian pears.

Pears...not just for decorating! 

  

The dried pears were probably the most work for the least amount of return (just in terms of volume). I  peeled and cored the pears, then I sliced them straight across so I wound up with pear rings.  I dunked all of the pears into a bowl of lemon water as soon as they were peeled to prevent browning.  I placed all the slices on cookie-cooling racks on top of baking sheets and put them in the oven at 170 degrees. Dipping them in water first made them take longer to dry, about 8 hours.  I started with about a dozen large pears and was able to fit the dried rings in a quart-size plastic baggie with room to spare.

The Belgian pears were my favorite.  It was another internet find, from Fiona at The Cottage Smallholder.  The recipe sounds crazy - you cook the pears in vinegar for 6 hours.  6 hours!  You'd think they'd be nothing but mush; and what's up with the vinegar?!  But I had so many pears I was willing to take the chance of wasting some.  I peeled and dunked as many pears as I could fit in the bottom of my pot.  No coring necessary - I like this recipe already!  It takes about 1/2 cup of white wine vinegar and 2 cups of sugar, which you heat up in a pot until the sugar is dissolved, then put in a single layer of pears.  You are also supposed to capture any of the juice from peeling the pears and add it to the pot.  Now, these pears weren't all that juicy, but I capture all the juice from peeling ALL the pears.  Plus I had a couple of overripe pears that I crushed in a citrus juicer.  So I had plenty of liquid.  

16 pears in a pot

Once the pears come to a boil, you cover them and simmer for 3 hours.  Then you are supposed to uncover them and cook another 3.  I only let them cook for 2, because the liquid was getting so low. As you can see they take on a lovely golden color (and the smell is amazing).

 The pears shrink down considerably as well.  Those 16 pears fit into 2 quart jars perfectly, with just enough syrup to cover them.  Oh, how did they taste?  They were sweet and velvety, without the slightest hint of vinegar flavor.  They are wonderful eaten plain, but I especially loved slicing them up over pound cake.  I can see I'll be making these again and again.  Actually, I did make them again...several times!  It was such an easy and delicious way to use up the bounty of pears.  

Still decorative!

Here's most of the results of a weekend spent in the kitchen.  It doesn't seem like much but it was well worth it.  I just can't wait to add peaches and plums and blackberries, etc.

Happy Fall, ya'll.