Over the last two weeks, I have seen some really neat 12 days of Christmas posts. And along the way, I got inspired to put together the “12 Days of Cotton.” Seemed like a fun thing to do. I wrote it down last week and am just getting it to the blog. I hope you enjoy it and you could sing along, at least in your head.
Rather than write out every verse that keeps building, I will cut to the chase. I’m even going to be goofy enough to sing 12 Days of Cotton if you want to give it a listen.
On the twelfth day of cotton, some fiber love I see…
12 farmers farming
11 DD60s
10 Pima shirts
9 designer labels
8 ginners ginning
7 pesky insects
6 row picker
5 bales an acre!
4 warm hoodies
3 good rains
2 cotton socks
and a favorite pair of jeans!
In case any of you are interested in a bit more information on each of the things I included in the lyrics…. here’s some background information.
- 12 farmers farming — Well there are more than 12 cotton farmers for sure, but at a moment’s notice, I can always rattle off a dozen or so names of cotton farmers who are great friends. Who’s on the list really varies based on what I’ve been thinking of that day or week though as there are so very many great people who grow my favorite fiber! Here are some of them who talk cotton online:
Texas’ Suzie Brasher Wilde through her Kissed a Farmer blog and Facebook page- Alabama’s Brian Byrd is on Twitter as ?
@bigbyrd24 and just finished picking this weekend - Georgia’s Trevor Smith is on Twitter and blogging as GAFarmer80
- Australia’s WarraBoy Brendan Taylor tweets cotton from down under
- Georgia’s Ashlee blogs at Across the Branch about her family & their cotton & watermelon farm
- Tennessee’s Bob Walker showed my niece Alicia around her first cotton farm visit.
- Texas couple Jon and Kelly Whatley are both on Twitter and she has a photo & family blog called FarmFresh.
- The Texas Cotton Producers put this together to share their story.
- California’s Travis Fugitt shares info through his Twitter account @tfugitt and I put some of his pics on my blog.
- North Carolina’s Brad Warren tweets his crop and recently finished harvest.
- Oklahoma’s Danny Robbins tweets from @rdr5hunter
- Australia’s Bess Gairns tells Tales of a Cotton Wife on her blog and has a Facebook page for it too
- and in case those aren’t the twelve cotton farmers you want to find, I have a list of cotton peeps who tweet you can follow.
- 11 DD60s — This one may be something a few of you aren’t familiar with. I know I wasn’t til I started being surrounded by cotton physiologists! Anyway, DD60s (pronounced D D sixties) are heat units based on temperatures above 60 degrees. Farmers compile this information so they know how the crop is developing. You can learn more about DD60s here.
10 Pima shirts — A lot of people are surprised by how soft and yet strong Pima shirts, sheets, etc are. It’s because Pima cotton has longer finer, strong fiber. I wrote a post about Pima cotton & what makes it different a few months ago that you may find interesting.- 9 designer labels — Great folks work with my favorite fiber! You can get good clothes without spending a lot of money or you can go for really high end fashion that’s more expensive. It is really up to you! You can learn about them through the TheFabricofOurLives.com or @CottonFashion on Twitter.
- 8 ginners ginning — Cotton farmers and consumers depend on a variety of jobs to get that natural fiber from the farm to our wardrobes. One of the ones that just seemed to fit the song was cotton ginners who gin the cotton separating the seed and lint. Here’s a look inside a cotton gin.
7 pesky insects — The boll weevil maybe the insect that most people know, but cotton is really attractive to some bad bugs — beet armyworms can really instill fear as can bollworms, budworms, plant bugs, aphids, white flies and more! Mississippi State Extension has a lot of information on the bugs that plague cotton farms. And farmers have a variety of ways to control bugs.- 6-row picker — The first time you see a six-row cotton picker going across a field of cotton, you may flashback to Star Wars or something! They are hulking machines who do the work of bringing a crop in for most US farmers even if they are four- or five-row pickers. Incredible to watch them run! Here’s some video of a cotton picker from this fall.
- 5 bales an acre! — The phrase alone excites me — five bales an acre! That means a farmer would be harvesting approximately 2,500 pounds of lint in the area that football is played on. While five bales to the acre is rare — the average harvest is closer to 1 – 2 bales an acre but there are farmers who can harvest more depending on the weather conditions, etc.
4 warm hoodies — It’s winter! Everyone needs a good hoodie or 12!- 3 good rains — Water is a must and this year with the drought that plagued most of the Cotton Belt, we would have loved just three good rains! We will dream for a bit more in 2013!
- 2 cotton socks — You can make a bunch of socks out of a bale — more than two thousand pairs actually!
- and a favorite pair of jeans! — My favorite pair of jeans is one that is three sizes smaller than the pair I wore at this time last year! Lee Jeans sent them to me after I featured a photo from their Facebook page on my blog.
———
And now that it is 2018… I decided to do a video!
View this post on Instagram
[…] Find her list at https://janiceperson.com/cotton/twelve-days-of-cotton-christmas-homage/ […]