After the ground was plowed (and sometimes harrowed) the team of mules or horses pulled a planter.  This was an implement with two steel wheels in the rear and a tongue in front.  The mules would be hitched to the tongue in front using a double tree.  If only one horse was used it was called a single tree.

A harness was used to hitch the horses. Unlike riding or show horses these were called draft or plow horses.

At the back of the planter were two things shaped like arrows spaced to create two rows.  As the planter was pulled these arrows (plow) created two furrows.  Behind this were two steel or iron boxes.  At the bottom of the box was a hole.  These were spaced so that seed would fall from the planter box to plant two rows at a time in the furrows.  The box had a lever so you could adjust the rate of fall or space between seeds.  Often the planter was a one row planter and then there was only one plow and one planter box.  Sometimes only one horse or mule was used.

I’ll write about cotton farming first.  After the seed was planted the farmer then began to worry about the weather praying for enough rain so that the seed would germinate.  There was no irrigation.

After the cotton plants came up, then the field had to be worked.  Weeds would choke the plants so they died or the weeds would use the moisture the cotton needed.  A process called “chopping cotton” was used.  The cotton really wasn’t chopped.  Instead a hoe was used to dig up the weeds.  Used was what we would now call a common garden hoe.  The farmer would walk up and down each row using the hoe to dig up the weeds.  The farmer carried a file with him to continually sharpen the hoe.  The blade on a new hoe was about six inches wide and six inches tall.  It  was not unusual to see a hoe only three or four inches tall as the hoe had been filed down as it was sharpened.

The farmer would go into the field after morning chores and began to hoe. ,He would continue until noon.   He would go to the house for what was called dinner.  This was the main meal of the day.  The farmer would rest after dinner for an hour or two then walk back to the field.  Hoeing would continue until evening.  About five or six p.m. the farmer would go back to the house for evening chores including milking.  Sometimes the entire family would be out in the field hoeing.  As a kid, when I visited the farm, I would hoe.  After the evening chores was the last meal of the day called supper.  This hoeing would have to be repeated several times during the growing season, as weeds would continue to come up.

After the cotton bloomed the farmer would have a fairly good idea of how good a crop he had, if nature cooperated.  Bolls would be formed.  These bolls would open when the plant matured.  He also had to worry about an insect called the boll weevil.  The boll weevil would ruin the bolls.  Burl Ives sang a famous song about the boll weevil.

When the cotton matured it then had to be picked by hand.  A long canvas sack was made.  The sack had straps that went over the shoulder.  The farmer carried the sack to the field and then crawled up and down the rows picking the cotton from the plants.  The bolls of the cotton had opened and the bolls hardened.  The cotton was picked from these opened bolls.  When the sack was full it was emptied into a wagon.  We little kids would also pick but our canvas sacks were smaller than those of the grown ups.

Typically, 100 labor hours were required to produce 250 pounds of cotton using 2 mules, 1 row plow, one row cultivator, hand hoeing and hand picking, per acre.  About 1942 a mechanical cotton picker was produced to be used with a tractor.  But many farms still did not have tractors.  It was not until 1954 that the number of tractors exceeded the number of horses and mules on the farm.

School usually started the Monday after labor day.  School would then let out for a week or two in late September or early October, so the farmer kids could help their fathers pick the cotton.

After all the cotton had been picked from the opened bolls, you went into the fields again and pulled the bolls that had not opened, off the plants.  The wagon loads of cotton would then be taken to town to a cotton gin.  The farmer received more money for the opened bolls than he did for the pulled unopened bolls.

Farmers would take their wagons under a big pipe which would suck the cotton from the wagon, separate out the cottonseed and bale the cotton into 800 pounds bales.  Some of the seed the farmer would keep for the next year’s crop.