My Turn

In 1934, the Bakersfield Exchange Club sponsored a cotton picking contest with prizes. The event was held in Buttonwillow and had 30 contestants. On Oct.12, 1935, the Kern County Farm Bureau directors decided to sponsor a similar event. The committee set Oct. 25 as the contest date and selected a 40-acre cotton field belonging to W.H. Mettler near Shafter. The ... Read More »

When my mother was a young girl growing up in Leland, Mississippi, she and her sister, Babe, and their first cousin (same age), Patsy Jeanne, would get to spend a lot of time together in the summers. Momma especially liked learning to make homemade biscuits from Mammaw Black. Other fun activities included Poppa Black playing his fiddle while they danced ... Read More »

My association with cotton began when I was born wearing 100% cotton cloth diapers and duck head safety pins. Cotton production has been one of my passions in life. In my early years, my father was an Extension agent in West Tennessee, and I tagged along to a lot of cotton farm visits. When I was home, I “farmed” with ... Read More »

Sporting a faded, floppy-brimmed fedora, Aunt Blanche would lay on the horn of her bob truck even though my older brother, Mike, and I were waiting for her on our front porch. We grabbed our new 9-foot-long Bemis Blue Cat cotton picking sacks made of heavy canvas with rubber dots on the bottom, and our paper bag lunches of rag ... Read More »

After 32 years of crop consulting, you would think this business would run like a well-oiled machine. To the contrary, running a company with predominantly 18- to 25-year-old employees is much like running a house full of teenagers. Always expect the unexpected! The DonnyBrook! I’m sure many people have no idea what a DonnyBrook is or where it originated. I ... Read More »

Members of the Verett family have farmed in Crosby County, Texas, since my granddad settled here in 1917. I grew up in Ralls, and my dad was a farmer but retired relatively early. At that point, my older brother, Eddie, took over the operation and hired me to help him while I was in high school. When I worked for ... Read More »

I was raised in the small town of Wisner, Louisiana. My mother was a registered nurse, and my father was a barber. Agriculture surrounded us, but I was a city boy. I didn’t know the difference between a cocklebur and a cotton plant. Before summer began between my junior and senior years of high school, Ray Young, a consultant who ... Read More »