Harvest Time in the Deep South

[redlevel]

These pictures are in South Georgia and South Alabama.
Harvest time is earlier down there than in my area of Middle Georgia, probably by 2-4 weeks.
Harvest of cotton and peanuts is probably a month earlier than it was 50 years ago in all of Georgia.
Fifty or sixty years ago, corn was the last of the row crops to be harvested. Now, corn harvest
in South Georgia is pretty much done by mid-late August. Plenty of time left for a late summer hay or
forage crop on the same dirt, or a winter vegetable crop.

My educated guess on yields of the pictured crops: 2.5 tons of goobers per acre, and 2.5 bales of cotton.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

I notice the earlier harvesting of Ohio crops also. I'm really sure it is short duration Hybrids, being planted early in the season. I remember hand picking corn clear into January when I was in 4th & 5 grade (1966-68 school years) and the snow cascading down on you when you chopped the stock. Now, every body uses a $350,000 harvester with a "Corn" head and Air Conditioning! Now the only corn standing after Thanksgiving are fields left up for Whitetail Deer hunting (and maybe for goose hunting too). As to soy beans, I think grandpa's first crop was around 1970 (his dairy heard was becoming too much work so he started doing cash crops!) After 50+ years of farming he retired in fall 1974, and lived until 1987. He always told me he preferred farming with horses, because you couldn't talk a horse into plowing all night!

Ivan

 

[THE PILGRIM]

Time to sing.
Jimmie Rodgers song, here's Merle's version.

Peach Picking Time In Georgia by Merle Haggard - YouTube

 

[Watchdog]

Beautiful scene.

"Old times there are not forgotten;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land."

 

[billwill]

Nothing prettier than a field of cotton under a full moon. You may have to be a Southerner to fully appreciate that view.

 

[cmore]

My friend in south central Ks has just started harvesting his soybeans.

 

[Iggy]

Harvest time in Wyoming is a little different. We've been sending out 8 to 10 truck loads of cattle to eat some of that Nebraska corn twice a week since the 8th of August. Finish up next week if it don't snow and close the roads.

 

[SteveA]

Picking corn here right now. Beans are a couple of weeks out. Cattle won't be off pasture until early October. Crops are a little later this year due to a too wet planting season. Didn't get most of my beans in dirt until after Memorial Day.

 

[rwsmith]

That is a beautiful thing....

Being away from the land, most of us have forgotten how important a successful harvest is.

 

[6518John]

Finish up next week if it don't snow and close the roads.

Snow--simply amazing! 92 degrees here today with humidity felt between 98-100 degrees. Hotter this month than ever was during summer. Bow season starts this weekend too. Only thing I will be hunting is air conditioning and a soft couch.

 

[6518John]

Being away from the land, most of us have forgotten how important a successful harvest is.

"There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace."― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

 

[Iggy]

Snow--simply amazing! 92 degrees here today with humidity felt between 98-100 degrees. Hotter this month than ever was during summer. Bow season starts this weekend too. Only thing I will be hunting is air conditioning and a soft couch.

Univ of Hawaii is coming to play football against the U of WY in a night game this weekend..

7000 feet and suppose to snow Sat night. You suppose those pineapple state kids are gonna have much fun?

They make kick Wyoming's butt, but I'll bet they won't have fond memories of doin' it.

 

[filipows]

Meanwhile in Eastern Washington

On the opposite corner of the country things look different

These pictures are in South Georgia and South Alabama.
Harvest time is earlier down there than in my area of Middle Georgia, probably by 2-4 weeks.
Harvest of cotton and peanuts is probably a month earlier than it was 50 years ago in all of Georgia.
Fifty or sixty years ago, corn was the last of the row crops to be harvested. Now, corn harvest
in South Georgia is pretty much done by mid-late August. Plenty of time left for a late summer hay or
forage crop on the same dirt, or a winter vegetable crop.

My educated guess on yields of the pictured crops: 2.5 tons of goobers per acre, and 2.5 bales of cotton.

 

[Targets Guy]

Saw a corn field being picked today nearby and lots of combines getting ready in the fields. Won't be long and the farmers will be at full throttle.

 

[Lee's Landing Billy]

Beautiful scene.

"Old times there are not forgotten;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land."

Watchdog, a beautiful post!!! Ifen you ain't from here, you'll NEVER understand!!!

 

[Bekeart]

In the corn filed with horses - long ago

, I think grandpa's first crop was around 1970 (his dairy heard was becoming too much work so he started doing cash crops!) After 50+ years of farming he retired in fall 1974, and lived until 1987. He always told me he preferred farming with horses, because you couldn't talk a horse into plowing all night!
Ivan

In the corn field with horses - long ago
Two of Granddad's brothers had a team and wagon in the corn field.
I was about a tall as the wagon wheels.
Walked the corn field with Grandpa gleaning ears of corn missed/left by a two row tractor mounted corn picker.
Pick up an ear - throw against the bang board on far side of wagon - ear drops into wagon.

Only did this once, but the memory is priceless.

Bekeart

 

[Jack Flash]

Sometimes if the price was too low, Dad would leave the corn standing in the field all winter. But that was up here in the frozen North.

 

[Watchdog]

Watchdog, a beautiful post!!! Ifen you ain't from here, you'll NEVER understand!!!

My mother's family were sharecroppers down in rural South Carolina back in the 1920s. Mom, her sister Wilma, and her two brothers, Odell and Curtis, all worked in the cotton fields or at the gin barn. My mother was seven-years-old and working in a damn cotton field. Her brothers were bad men, but that's another story, and not one to be told on an Internet forum.

Grandpa must have finally scraped enough money together (by bootlegging like his daddy, most likely) and they moved up to York County where Grandpa opened up a little store on what's now Cherry Road in Rock Hill. It's long gone now, of course.

I remember visiting that store as a little boy, seeing Grandpa and his cronies sitting around the stove, looking like something out of a Rockwell painting. Except when you looked closer, and totally unlike a Rockwell painting, they were all gettin' drunker 'n skunks on moonshine whiskey. And yeah, there was a Confederate battle flag hanging on the wall behind the cash register. I remember that scene like it was yesterday, those men sitting around drinking, smoking, and chewing. I couldn't have been more than four-years-old at the time.

Later, when I was older, my grandmother told me a lot of the history of my mother's family, and told me never to tell my mother I knew some of those things. I never did, either.

So yes, old times there are not forgotten, and never will be.

 

[redlevel]

The machine digging the peanuts is called an inverter. It digs the peanuts, rolls them over a conveyor
type device, shakes the dirt off the nuts, and leaves the nuts straight up, or "inverted," so the sun
can dry them. In weather like we are having now, over 90* and dry, they will be able to combine those
about the second or third day after digging. They will be dumped on wagons holding five or six tons,
then hauled to the farm or a buying point, where they will be dried using forced heated air.

Many years ago peanuts were dug by simply lifting them out of the ground with smaller tractors and simple
diggers. They were loaded on wagons, and stacked around poles to dry. A stationary combine, usually driven
by a belt pulley mounted on a tractor. The stacks were loaded on wagons and hauled to the combine, or "picker"
as it was often called.

 

[bricker]

My parents would tell me stories of pullin' cotton for a penny a pound. I never picked any, but I chopped a lot of cotton growing up.