Farm City Week

Last week Altus celebrated Farm City Week. Paul and I decided to do the farm tour that was offered at 8 AM on Wednesday. It was an early morning, but one worth waking up for. We had a great tour guide and learned a lot about cotton farming, peanut farming, irrigation, and tractors.
This was our tour guideOur first stop was at the cotton gin in Humphreys. Here we learned how the cotton is cleaned and baled. There are different grades of quality that determine how much the farmer will get for a bale. The lowest grade cotton goes into the seats in your car, under the floorboards and stuff. It also goes into making jeans. The higher quality cotton goes to make nice shirts and blouses.
We were told that this bale was a low grade cotton. We also learned about cotton seeds. Most farmers use genetically enhanced seeds that resist insects and diseases. They are not allowed to harvest seed since they sign a contract with the seed companies.
These are cotton modules, ready to be processed in the gin.The gin we visited had just survived a fire, which is fairly common. When cotton gets caught somewhere and gets too hot, or if the metal parts spark, it causes a fire. As you can imagine, this spreads very quickly and they have to contain it fast! It smelled pretty bad in there, but we got to see the facility. What a mess! It looked like snow all over the place! Everytime I breathed, I felt like I was inhaling cotton fibers.
This picture was taken inside the building.Next we visited a cotton farm. Here we learned about planting and harvesting cotton. The farmer also showed us how the equipment worked. Here he is explaining how the very expensive cotton picker picks the cotton off the plant. (These are only 2 parts of the machine.)This is the large cotton stripper. It is less expensive, but doesn't do as good a job. Each farmer has to evaluate what type of equipment to use and when to harvest. A view of the cotton stripper from the back And this is a hopper
Our next stop was the Altus Peanut Company.There are some peanuts grown here, but this is mainly a storage facility where other growers can store their peanuts. I think this company buys the peanuts and then sells them. The man who ran the place taught us about growning peanuts. In this picture he is showing us what the plant looks like. Peanuts are the part of the plant that grows underground.He made us guess how many pounds of peanuts were here. The pictures doesn't show all of them, but there were 8 million pounds of peanuts stored under this roof!These are spanish peanuts.After the tour of the facility, we went into the business office and tried all kinds of peanuts: roasted, salted, jalapeno, and cajun. There were also peanuts without the shell in a variety of flavors.

Paul and I had a chance to ride on some tractors at the end of the tour. Paul was so excited to see me on a tractor...I think all I needed was a cowboy hat!Me on the small tractorPaul on the huge John DeerePaul convinced me the big tractor was so cool, I had to try it out for myself.They really were fun to drive! Especially the big John Deere - it was like a luxury sedan inside! So comfortable, with heating and air conditioning, a radio, and a great panoramic view from the high seat! I really wouldn't mind having one of these.
And here are some videos of us driving the tractors. This one is me:


And this one is Paul: