I grew up in a rural community east of Leland, Mississippi, that is referred to as Longswitch or sometimes Dunleith. This area is rich in farming and cultural history. Leland is home to Jim Henson and the Kermit the...
Growing up in Houston, Texas, I was not exactly surrounded by much in the way of agriculture. However, my grandfather was a corn and hay farmer near Waco, Texas, so I did get to spend summers in fields watching...
The announcement appeared towards the bottom of page 17, in the June issue of Cotton Farming. The “In Remembrance: Dr. William F. (Bill) Lalor Sr.” acknowledged the passing of a long-time employee of Cotton Incorporated.
I’m sure there are many...
The stream on my grandfather’s farm is shallow and narrow where it begins, only inches deep and two feet wide. The spring, which feeds it, is small but reliable even in the dry months of summer. A hundred feet...
If you’re a farmer or work in the ag industry at all, you don’t need to be told the mental struggle is real. It’s not a surprise to many of us why this is a topic the health care...
Working in the regulatory arena can be frustrating and tedious, but for those of us who have found ourselves doing this work, it can also have its humorous points if you know where to look.
When I first started...
While serving as an Extension entomologist for cotton with the Alabama Cooperative Extension Service at Auburn University for the past 51 years, I have experienced a few interesting and unusual situations. I would like to share some of the...
In the mid-1990s before our entry into the transgenic era, a bag of cotton seed cost around $35. Formerly, a bag was a standard 50 lbs., though in the old days 100-lb. bags were sometimes used. In 2023 in...
Reflecting on things I learned while growing older keeps taking me back to childhood. One such memory concerns fences, a lesson I appreciate more now than then. I’ve been weed eating in the woods at my mother’s childhood home...
About 30 years ago, a 20-something city girl from Massachusetts began spending an inordinate amount of time at the Delta Research and Extension Center picking the brains of Mississippi State University’s Extension specialists. As a young agricultural journalist and...
Iwas incredibly fortunate to enjoy a career in cotton. I was born in Douglas, Arizona, but moved to Farmington, New Mexico, as a toddler. A small family farm consisted of dairy cows and fruit trees. My parents grew up...
All of us at Cotton Farming would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the My Turn column through the years. Many of our readers have told us it’s one of their favorite pages in the magazine.
As we...
I
grew up on a typical small family cotton farm in the 1940s and 1950s. We grew about 10-15 acres, depending on the season. We did everything by hand — chopped to thin the stand, hoed to control the grass,...
I told my cotton story here October 2020 on our (I have three younger siblings) 188-acre, dryland cotton farm in Willacy County, Texas. Several items need updating. Thank you for the opportunity.
For one, I forgot my childhood nickname. My 73-year-old...
I hadn’t planned a sequel about early memories of my longtime friend William Cross. It occurred to me, however, I had not mentioned two things for which he is well known — fishing and hunting. Many of us have tales...
