Harvest Time in the Deep South

[shouldazagged]

Many good old boys in Kentucky are preparing for the late reefer harvest.

It's our number one cash crop.

 

[Skeet 028]

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.

Iggy we had snow this mornin.. Not much but we only live at 4200 ft..The Mountain had plenty Raining here again tonight We've had more'n an inch of rain last 3 days. Keeps doing this and all them mountains will be molehills

 

[Mike SC Hunter]

Iggy we had snow this mornin.. Not much but we only live at 4200 ft..The Mountain had plenty Raining here again tonight We've had more'n an inch of rain last 3 days. Keeps doing this and all them mountains will be molehills

Wow!....In the 90's here........We're fighting skeeters with thermocells in our deer stands....Our season comes in August 15th......Nothing much but corn being harvested here now....Next comes cotton......

 

[rwsmith]

And they were sitting and.....

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.

And they were sitting and discussing Marcel Proust.

And Norman Rockwell wasn't so pure as to not stick a jug of squeezins' under the table to hint at ALL that was going on.


Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom- Marcel Proust

 

[keith44spl]

Beautiful scene.

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

Ah Boys,
It hasn't been too awful many decades ago, when cotton was king down on the Brazos.


.
Modern Harvest of the 'White Gold'........

.

 

[muddocktor]

When I go home next week I'll try to remember to take some pics of them harvesting the sugar cane around the house. They started replanting fields last month and should be harvesting now. The Sugar Cane Festival was held last weekend in New Iberia and that's a pretty good indication when the mills open up for cane.

 

[Lee's Landing Billy]

Mud, I'll take a bottle of that cane syrup for my pancakes!!

 

[Bekeart]

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.

A friend, of my parents generation, told of burning ears of corn in their heating stove during the depression.

Bekeart

 

[Jack Flash]

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom - Marcel Proust

My jaw just hit the floor ... someone quoted M. Proust. Has to be a first on this Forum!

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

When I go home next week I'll try to remember to take some pics of them harvesting the sugar cane around the house. They started replanting fields last month and should be harvesting now. The Sugar Cane Festival was held last weekend in New Iberia and that's a pretty good indication when the mills open up for cane.

No...the Sugar Cane Festival is being held THIS weekend. The cane looks wonderful-my morning walks are along the headlanes in the cane fields and I've enjoyed watching them grow over the year while listening to the Bob White quail calling at sunrise in the bean fields (the farmers grow soybeans in rotation-if the price is good they harvest if not they just plow into the ground). If you do a fly over you can see where the enterprising have carved out little plots in the middle of the fields to grow the OTHER cash crop

 

[rog8732]

Many good old boys in Kentucky are preparing for the late reefer harvest.

It's our number one cash crop.

I heard a tale about them ole Kentucky boys a few years ago, where they were using national and state owned forest lands instead of their own farms; (for THAT money crop), to avoid having their land confiscated.

Common misconceptions about missing a few teeth, shoeless and in overalls; quite often the butt of jokes maybe,... but they don't seem to be lacking any intellect in getting by in life.

 

[Skeet 028]

I left one field of corn unpicked one year. Had to pick it when the ducks and geese got in there one day in mid December. Must have been 10,000 birds in there. Price was pretty low but better than no return. I left the corn around the pond unpicked for the geese anyway. I have a friend back east on the Eastern Shore of Md who's 15 yr old son has about 10 acres of corn to pick. Sells it to the deer hunters as "deer corn". Something just seems wrong with that! We called it baiting...but we never did it for deer...just ducks and geese. LOL

 

[keith44spl]

Many good old boys in Kentucky are preparing for the late reefer harvest.

It's our number one cash crop.

Yup, it's erad time in the Commonwealth.........

Helpin' them Good Ol' Boys with their crop in days gone by.

.

 

[S&W ucla]

Hey Keith44spl, Bear guns are often discussed here. What is the best "WEED" gun?

 

[shouldazagged]

I heard a tale about them ole Kentucky boys a few years ago, where they were using national and state owned forest lands instead of their own farms; (for THAT money crop), to avoid having their land confiscated.

Common misconceptions about missing a few teeth, shoeless and in overalls; quite often the butt of jokes maybe,... but they don't seem to be lacking any intellect in getting by in life.

As for misconceptions and stereotypes, I imagine some of you remember "Turtle Man" Ernie Brown. Brown is a millionaire businessman who keeps his dental work in place off camera. His schtick is playing the stereotypical hillbilly oaf.

He lives in an area that was for a time the headquarters of the Cornbread Mafia, a hugely lucrative drug cartel. Yes, some of the good old boys do very well indeed.

By the way, I wasn't kidding about weed being our top cash crop. I believe that's still the case. Some of what's grown here is quite highly regarded by connoisseurs, I'm told.

 

[keith44spl]

shouldazagged,

Ya know we got ol Johnny Boone last year....


* As a side note, I testified on behalf of the Commonwealth,
against two members/former members of the 'cornbread mafia'
in a trial, a double homicide, they were charged to have perpetrated...

A few bomb threats, death threats, a lit'l witness tampering and intimidation of jurors,
and after a couple of tries the state would get it's conviction.
.

A some what feeble attempt to stay on topic here.......

Cotton on the road side, cotton in the ditch,
We all picked the cotton, but, we never got rich.....

.

 

[Skeet 028]

Hey Keith44spl, Bear guns are often discussed here. What is the best "WEED" gun?

A spray gun with Roundup!! LOL.

Oh I am dense.."WEED" duh