I love hearing people tell their stories about how cotton makes them feel, so much so I have welcomed a series of posts on the topic. It isn’t the factual pieces I write like what a cotton plant looks like as much how warm it makes hearts as well as bodies. There have been several of these that I just love!

Well, last week, as I was getting back in the swing of things after the holidays, I stumbled on a post by a writer I met earlier this year while I was in Austin. Addie Broyles does a great job of writing about a family quilt from generations ago. I had to ask if it was cotton and she said she was certain it was! So here’s a short excerpt of it and a photo from her blog… I’m sure once you read it, you will want to follow the link over to her site! I skipped part of it that you’ll want to catch back up on!

….. Like always, I slept on the couch under the fern, but this time, I had a new source of warmth: my great-great-grandmother Lena’s postage stamp quilt.

Lena and her husband, Gustaf, have given my family more than they ever could have imagined. Maybe they knew the roots they were planting when they left Sweden’s Gotland island, 10 years apart, in the late 1800s, but I doubt she could have guessed that her granddaughter would still be making pies with her rolling pin, much less than her granddaughter’s granddaughter would Instagram it.

She could have never guessed that that quilt she made when she got to Springfield (at least we think), would still be in such good condition that the newest member of the family, 7-month-old Nash, would chew on its corners.

via Sleeping under a quilt that’s older than all of us | The Feminist Kitchen.

The post Wrapping Up in History, Family & Cotton appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I have had a guest series of posts related to cotton getting a bit dusty. I needed to dust it off and get back into getting people to tell their stories of how cotton is the fabric of their lives here on my blog. I have been one of many  talking about FFA on social media this week (afterall it is FFA week or #FFAweek as a hashtag on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and Facebook).

One of my tweeps — Jordan Simonson @Advocate4Ag who’s blog is self-titled — said those blue & gold FFA jackets held a lot of stories. So I said write one for me! Afterall, the famed blue corduroy is cotton! And every FFA member or alumni I have ever met has an incredible attachment to the jacket. Like so many other stories though, it is the personal connections to that cotton jacket and all the great experiences that came with it that moved Jordan to take me up on the offer.

A lot of people have only heard about FFA, and may not really know much about it. I was one of them til I had the chance to get to know FFA members and participate in some of their programs including the Washington Leadership program Jordan mentions. Anyway, I hope you enjoy hearing his story!

What You Thought You Knew About FFA

The National FFA Organization, an organization synonymous with agriculture for many, but so much more for those that live/lived it. As an agvocate, I owe a part of who I am to FFA. It began my love for communications and helped shape my leadership skills so I was prepared for college. While there are thousands of people that have been a member of the FFA, there are still many who have not been a member. Below are the top 5 misconceptions about FFA that people who didn’t live it could make.

1. FFA is for farmers

I  have heard this several times in my small lifetime, “Oh, you were a member of the Future Farmers of America?” as they sit there and ask a question in their minds, “but you’re not a farmer?”

FFA has a very wide range of interests for students ranging from landscaping to forestry. It is no longer just about farming (even though we still love our farmers).

A group of my FFA friends went to the Washington Leadership Conference. Here we are siting in front of Wisconsin at the World War 2 memorial. By the way, those blue jackets are made out of cotton.

2. FFA is just a social club

While I spent a lot of time learning about agriculture during my time in FFA, I also learned about how to become a leader and professional. FFA leads many activities that help encourage leadership including Supervised Agricultural Experiences (SAE’s) where students can actually start their own business or work alongside a business owner. I owe my professionalism and can-do attitude to FFA.

 3. FFA doesn’t care about the entire community, just the agricultural community

While FFA understands that the agricultural community is important, it also understands that the community needs to serve the world to help make a difference. I remember my time at the Washington Leadership Conference where they taught us about being leaders through service. We actually went out and picked kale fields for the less fortunate so they could eat that night.

My Collegiate FFA group in a food stand on our campus at UW-Madison. There were a lot of brats made that day.

4. FFA isn’t fun

You would be dead wrong here. FFA knows how to have fun, whether it is having a tubing party, or a Halloween dance, FFA knows how to have fun. Not to mention all of the contests are not only hard work, but it is really fun when you come away with the victory.

5. I could have never been / could never be a part of FFA

This is the biggest misconception about FFA. FFA is for everyone, not just high schoolers focused on entering into an agricultural field. FFA is giving the world the next generation that will solve world hunger, will help treat diseases, will help turn our hurting economy around. I may sound really confident about the future FFA will help build, but I see it every day at my job and where my fellow FFA members have taken their lives. By the way, you can become a member of FFA at any age, not just a high schooler.

FFA is a chance for students to become a part of the future, are you ready to jump in?

Posts by friends:

• RuralRoute 2 — The FFA Creed
• Rural Route 2 — What’s in a jacket?
• The Ranch Wife Chronicles — Ignite the Future of Agriculture. 
• The Pinke Post — Why is FFA Relevant For Our Future?
• Monsanto Blog Inventing a Solution to the Kudzu Problem, is it Child’s Play? 
• Living on the Edge — A Life in the Blue Jacket

Related articles

• Students use National FFA Week to share value of agricultural education, history of FFA
• Expanding Opportunity with Help from the FFA
• Thankful for the Potential Our Youth Offer!
• FFA Students Looking Forward to Learning Leadership Skills, Meeting New People
• Have you heard it’s National FFA Week?

The post Love Those Cotton Blue & Gold FFA Jackets! A Guest Post from An Advocate for Ag appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

The post Ric Dragon’s Handmade Cotton Shirt is also a Talisman appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

People frequently ask me why cotton farmers do this or that. One of the most common questions is about GMO cotton, or why they would plant a cotton variety that has been genetically modified in one way or another.

I have talked about the choice in bits and pieces, but I think this post by Suzie Wilde of I Kissed a Farmer fame does a great job of explaining her farm and the choices they make.  Rather than try to speak for her, I am just putting the first couple of paragraphs here with the recommendation you visit her blog to read the rest.

A Buggy full of Cotton

For harvest season this year, I left my office each day at noon to go run the boll buggy for the Farmer I Kiss.  So why would I go to work early to get my office work done, then drive 40 miles to the dusty, noisy, bumpy, late night job of cotton harvesting?   Because harvest season is the best time of the year.  It means we actually beat the Chihuahuan Desert and produced cotton!

The post Why would a farmer plant GMO cotton? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

It has been a little while since I’ve had a guest post in the series of people telling about how cotton is the fabric of their lives. This one has been in the works for a little while though and it is worth the wait. It’s from California elementary school teacher Sarah who blogs at  The House That Ag Built. She has both Twitter (@houseagbuilt) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/houseagbuilt) accounts as well. Thanks Sarah for sharing your story & the story of your students! 

Why I Love Cotton in the Classroom

Guest post by Sarah from The House That Ag Built for Janice the great J

As an elementary school teacher, I know the importance of teaching agriculture.  Society is so far removed from agriculture that many kids and adults alike think that food is made in the store and not grown in the field.  That is sad.  This past school year, I made the decision to step up my agriculture education a notch (or two) and boy am I happy with the results!  There are now 24 kids in my area that know more about agriculture than their parents and most adults in our area.

My first graders did a four-week agriculture unit and our focus was cotton.  We learned the structure of a cotton plant, what a cotton plant needs to grow, where cotton grows in the US, what we use cotton for, and we even got to see cotton that was straight from a farmer’s field!  Cotton is the perfect commodity to teach – even to such young learners!  Cotton is everywhere, it literally surrounds us in the form of clothing, we use it every day in the form of money, and it is found all around our homes in the form of towels, and sheets.

It is easy for kids to make a connection with something that is all around them, both at home and at school.  I LOVE cotton in the classroom! Having my students come up to me as proud as can be declaring that they are wearing cotton was so much fun!  It really brought agriculture to life for my kids.

I could go on and on about all my proud moments with cotton in my classroom, but I will let my students work show just how much they retained 7 months later.  I told them to write why cotton is important and here is what they did:

“I love cotton because I have my best coat and it is made out of cotton.  I almost wear it every day because it is my best shirt (coat) ever in my life and I have a lot of blankets at home and cotton is important too.”

“I like cotton because it makes pillows and I play pillow fight, and (cotton) gives me socks I love to wear.  And one more thing they (cotton) make me my favorite shoes.”  My 6-year-old student made the connection from cotton to pillows to having a pillow fight; cotton = fun!  They are so adorable!

“I love cotton because the cows eat cotton seeds and then they give milk and the milk goes to the dairy and the dairy makes ice cream!  I love cotton!  And I love cotton because my favorite shirt is made of cotton; my shirt is warm too.  I love cotton very very very much! Thank you!”  My favorite connection!  It is pretty cool that they can explain how cotton and ice cream relate!

“The important (thing about cotton) is that cotton gives us pillows and I love to sleep when I am so tired and cotton is so fuzzy and cotton makes money and I love to do a pillow fight and my blanket it is so fuzzy and it is blue and even plants of cotton. I love cotton.  Cotton is so important for us.  I love cotton so much if we didn’t have cotton we wouldn’t have clothes and pillow fights! I love cotton so so so much.” This writing is all over the place but when she was reading it to me after, she was so excited that she knew so much about cotton products!  She even remembered that money is made out of cotton.

A few of the picture my students drew on the back of their papers:

Cotton makes dollars (aka money).

Cotton makes sheets and clothes.

They even remembered how to draw a cotton plant and the boll.

As you can see cotton is lots of fun to teach in an elementary classroom.  My students and I love cotton in the classroom because it is easy to relate to and creates lasting agricultural literacy.

Thank you for having me Janice!

I love it! And think its awesome how much the kids remembered from one time of year to another! 

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• Cotton 101: Saw My First Cotton Plants for the 2012 Season

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The post Cotton is the Fabric of the Classroom for @HouseAgBuilt appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I love finding new bloggers and really love it when one of them finds me and connects! That’s what happened a few weeks ago when an Arkansas woman subscribed to my blog. I looked at her blog and thought “Wow. She seems like so many people I know!” Since then comments and emails have gone back and forth and I’m lucky enough to have my new blogging friend Lacey join my “Cotton – Fabric of Our Lives” series with today’s post.

Lacey says she was “born and raised in eastern Arkansas, agriculture is all I know. In 2006, I married an aerial applicator and we now have two beautiful children. I have recently started a blog called The Ag Wife Diaries. In this blog, I express what it is like to be a pilot’s wife and also tell some of my thoughts on life. My purpose for my blog is to connect with other women.” You can also find her blog through the Facebook page for The Ag Wife Diaries.

Talking back and forth, Lacey pointed out that she and her husband are much more connected to rice than my favorite fiber. But when I explained that my series of guest posts ranges dramatically in knowledge of cotton from shoppers to cotton farmers, she said she had a real passion for cotton and started writing….

The post The Small Joys of Cotton appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I love that my friend Stacy Hadrick (@StacyHadrick on Twitter, she blogs at Our Little Place on the Prairie) was willing to join the “Fabric of Our Lives” series of guest posts!  Stacy is a fifth generation American farmer, mom of 3 amazing kids, and a woman who is happiest when her plate is full. She’s relatively new to blogging where she’s sharing her life on the prairie in rural South Dakota with family and friends. She points out that “When you live an hour from a Wal-Mart it takes a lot of creativity and planning to keep ahead of my group.” LOL! I can only imagine how much time & effort it takes to stay ahead of a household that includes Troy and three kids!

When I have small moments of time to myself (which is so rare!), one of my favorite things to do is to spend time in a fabric store, touching and looking at all the beautiful colors, bolt after bolt of cotton fabric.  It’s in my blood, since I was a little girl I have logged many an hour in fabric stores with my mom, grandma and Aunt Penny. I love looking at pattern books, picking out fabric and feeling the excitement of getting home to start my project.  I remember vividly my mom talking to me about cotton fabric she said: ‘although it wrinkles easy, it’s also easy to sew with, easy to care for and breathes really well’. My first 4-H sewing project was a pair of cotton shorts. Funny, I can remember the shorts but have no idea what ribbon I received.

I’m proud to say that my kids are continuing my love for sewing and cotton fabric.  What is even better in our small community we have an amazing quilt shop.  My youngest daughter, Miss R begs me once a week to take her there. In fact about 6 months ago she got an idea that every morning I could take her to the quilt shop.  She planned on hanging out in the morning before preschool and have Lori (the store owner) then take her to school for her afternoon session.  Miss R was sure I wouldn’t say no. It made me laugh, she likes being at the fabric store so much she came up with this incredible idea. Her plan didn’t work out, but we continue to make regular stops and get our fabric fix.

Miss R and the pillowcase she made

Each of my children have sewed their first cotton item. My oldest son, T has  made many pairs of shorts- camouflage is his favorite color. Miss O has sewed a blanket for her baby cousin.  Miss R has made 3 pillow cases now, for her young age of 4 she loves to sew and is very capable of controlling the sewing machine. With all of my children I have shared the wisdom of my mom about sewing with cotton.

Teigen and the cotton shorts he made for this year's 4-H project

I can’t wait to see all the things we will create through our future sewing projects.  I’m sure we will make amazing memories with yards and yards of colorful cotton fabric.

My chairs that I recovered in different cotton fabrics since I couldn't pick just one. 6 chairs all different fabric.

This post grabs me…. one because my mom and grandmom have always been able to make anything. Really. And somehow me and fabrics connected early but the ability to use a sewing machine without breaking a needle eluded me. My thriving at the coloring outside the lines didn’t mesh too well with working from precise patterns either so I’ve had to freelance some of the things I do and convince someone else to help. Now I’m thinking my indecision over fabric to cover my dining room chairs has an answer – not just one!

I’d love to have more people tell about some of their connections to cotton. If you are interested, here’s how you can guest post here. And don’t forget to check out Stacy’s blog  Our Little Place on the Prairie by starting out with her recipe for blogging. Finally, if you want to know about cotton beyond the fabric used in sewing, check out my Cotton 101 series of posts and you’ll get to see what it looks like on the farm and more!

Related articles

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The post Cotton & Sewing are a Family Tradition for @StacyHadrick appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

When I started the fabric of our lives series of guest posts, I thought about some of the people who could really help celebrate my favorite natural fiber. oddly, one of the names that came to mind is normally connected to sheep — my friend Sally Colby Scholle who lives in Pennsylvania & has sheep. She tweets as @sheepwriter blogs about it at https://sheepwriter.wordpress.com/. I couldn’t tell if it was really nervy to ask her to write about natural fiber or not so I told her it was fine if wool got equal time, cause she and I both know the various natural fibers all play a role for us. I love the post she came up with too!

If it feels good, wear it!

I was one of those wiggle-worm kids who just couldn’t sit still in school. Every teacher is blessed with a few of us fidgety kids, and I hereby apologize to all of the teachers who had to tolerate my squirminess.

Now I realize that part of the reason I was so restless was because I just couldn’t stand the way my little plaid dresses felt. They were itchy. I didn’t know this at the time, but I’m sure that the reason those dresses didn’t feel quite right is because I was in elementary school when the great new P fabric was introduced.

My mom hit the homemaker jackpot – she no longer had to iron my cute little dresses. I, however, drew the short straw and had to wear itchy clothes.

Somehow I adjusted and made it to junior high, where my home economics teacher assigned a fabric identification project. I was lucky – my mom sewed, and we had a multitude of fabric scraps. I loved learning the names of the pretty cotton fabrics as I carefully stapled them to a piece of poster board … seersucker, chintz, chambray, gingham, denim.

Ahh…denim. With two jobs – farmer and ag writer – I can almost always wear whatever I want. I have old, broken-in jeans that are perfect for whatever I have to do in the barn or in the field. Some have patches, some should have patches, but they’re all comfortable. I love the durability of denim jeans and how they become part of me. I also love denim’s other life as deep-dyed indigo blue for dressy jeans.

In close second for favorite clothing are my cotton t-shirts. The long-sleeved versions are perfect for layering in winter, for in-between weather and for sun protection in summer. Cotton sweatshirts are great for unexpected changes in weather, so I usually keep one in the front of the four-wheeler. When I shop, I always look for the cotton label  – it means clothing that won’t itch, pill or look thin and worn before its time. Although my first choice for everyday wear is a cotton t-shirt, my dressy cotton shirts are the perfect choice for pairing with dark jeans when it’s time to look like something other than a farmer.

Since we raise sheep, all this cotton talk might make me sound like a traitor. But wool is another natural, renewable fiber that, like cotton, has a multitude of uses and blends well with cotton. I often use the sleeves from worn-out cotton sweatshirts to make little coats for chilled lambs. If that isn’t the perfect match, nothing is!

In cotton, I can walk around the pasture checking new lambs, trim hooves, milk goats, ride a horse, work in my garden, meet with farmers at a field day, go shopping, attend an ag meeting or have dinner with friends. What else is there?

Thanks, cotton farmers, for growing my jeans and shirts!

The post If it feels good, wear it! appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

With the guest post series, I had no idea how diverse some of the posts would become and have to admit that Kevin surprised me when he sent me a post he published on the Cotton Boll Conspiracy and asked if I’d like to repost it for his submission.

Kevin’s goal has been first and foremost to write this blog as though he was “the only one reading it. The Cotton Boll Conspiracy exists simply because it’s something I enjoy doing. Its topics are ones I enjoy, find interesting or believe to be of significance to someone somewhere. I never saw a need to attach my name to something that I was essentially writing for my own enjoyment.” So I love that somewhere along the way, he came across cotton as a component for paving roads and that it stuck for him.

Cotton Roads: Recalling an Ill-Conceived Idea

Using cotton as a key ingredient in road building seems difficult to fathom today but during the 1930s it was all the rage, at least for a short while.

Part of the reason was that because in the midst of the Great Depression there was an abundance of three things: Unemployed Americans, cotton and roads that needed to either be built or refurbished. Someone somewhere came up with the idea of combining the three.

Hence, for some time, cotton roads were said to be the wave of the future, and the soft, fluffy staple fiber became a major element in road building across a good part of the US.

The idea apparently came about when a New Deal entity called theAgricultural Adjustment Administration sought ways to increase consumption of American cotton, the price of which had been driven down through overproduction.

At the same time, the Works Progress Administration was on the lookout for a means to create more jobs for the unemployed, and in 1935 the government launched an experiment, dubbed “cotton roads,” that filled both needs, according to Michigan History magazine.

Some 24 states, including South Carolina, participated in the project to use cotton fabric on the road base as a reinforcement.

A 1930s government film explained the process:

After a dirt roadway has been graded, a priming coat of asphalt is spread over it. On top of this, strips of cotton fabric are laid like so much carpet and the overlapping edges tacked down. With the pouring of a final coat of asphalt, the cotton is embedded between the two layers, forming a strong reinforcement which is said to prevent cracking and erosion. Gravel is then spread on the surface and a steamroller completes the job. The road costs a trifle more than average but lasts from three to five years longer.

While Michigan History reports that within two years, the venture was deemed unsuccessful and abandoned, a 1944 book titled ”Better Living in the Postwar World” apparently didn’t get the message:

… ’cotton roads’ have been built in a number of states to try out a specially woven cotton mesh used as reinforcement for asphalt highways. ‘Some day, perhaps,’ declared the National Association of Manufacturers, ‘you will ride on partly cotton roads in a partly cotton automobile on partly cotton tires to a picnic where you will use cotton seed oil on a salad which you will eat with a cotton-handled fork.’

And then again, maybe you won’t.

One thing is for certain, a bunch of PR folks somewhere must have been on the ball, because the articles, films and other mentions of the concept behind ”Cotton Roads” during the 1930s are all unfailingly rosy.

Has anyone heard about cotton being used in paving since the 30s?

PS. – In no way do I think I’m that good of a PR person!

The post Instead of Country Roads, They Could Have Been Cotton Roads? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Recently my friend Daren met a West Texas cotton farmer at a meeting in Chicago and was impressed with her Facebook page where she’s taking people through a year of growing dryland cotton on the edge of the Chihuahuan Desert through her Facebook page — Kissed a Farmer. What came next? Obviously he had to introduce us! Now that I’ve connected to Suzie Wilde online, I’m trying to figure out whether I’ve met her and her husband Daniel. Afterall, the cotton industry is pretty small.  The Wildes live in San Angelo (that’s in West Central Texas) and farm cotton, wheat and milo.  Daniel has been growing cotton for 40 years and comes from a long line of Texas cotton farmers.  Suzie is the daughter of a second generation cotton ginner from the southern Rolling Plains of Texas.  Here’s a bit of her story and you really should like the Kissed a Farmer Facebook page so you can follow it throughout the year. (Since I wrote this post, Suzie started a Kissed a Farmer blog telling the story of their cotton farm.)

Daniel & Suzie Wilde

If I ever write my autobiography, the first line will be, “My earliest memory is of cotton.”  My playpen was in the front room of a cotton gin office.  I knew the farmers who brought their cotton to my dad’s gin so well that I thought of all of them as my “uncles.”  I always loved the clink-clank sound made by the big black weights of the old manual scale when a trailer load of cotton pulled over the deck.  When I heard that sound, I knew one of my “uncles” was about to come in and if I was lucky, they would buy a 5 cent soft drink in a thick green glass bottle from the old red soda machine and give me the first sip.

Being the daughter of a second generation cotton ginner, and now married to a multi-generational cotton farmer, I consider the excitement of that first load of cotton as the beginning of the best time of the year, time to harvest cotton!  The local newspapers will run a little story each year of the farmer who harvests the first bale of cotton in the county, sometimes with a photo of the farmer and ginner standing with the actual bale of cotton.

Daniel & the Planter

Somewhere in my old photo albums are a couple of those yellowing newspaper clippings of my smiling dad standing beside one of his smiling customers with that coveted first bale of the year.  The black and white photos from back in the 50’s and 60’s of proud, smiling farmers and ginners with their first bales line the wall of a steakhouse that now occupies the hull of an old cotton gin not far from here.  I stop there every chance I get just to reminisce.

I love to ride along with my husband and watch the basket of the cotton harvester fill up with that beautiful, fluffy white fiber for the first time each year.  We may not have the first bale in the county, but the smiles in our field are just as big as the ones in those old black and white photos when our first basket gets full.

My seasons are not marked by a calendar, but by watching all the different colors that paint across the fields of cotton throughout the year.  Bright crayon green as it peeks up out of the ground in the spring.  Soft butter yellow flowers that turn baby girl pink, then just briefly a gem stone purple before falling off as it produces the boll in the summer.  Deep olive green and rusty red leaves as fall approaches.  Crispy brown and bridal gown white as the bolls pop open to dry in the sunshine, waiting for the best time of the year, time to harvest cotton.  I have been wrapped in the the fabric of our lives quite literally my entire life, and what a beautiful, colorful life it is.

Daniel in the cotton harvester aka a cotton stripper, pickers are used in most other cotton production areas. 

Daniel in a cotton field

You can read more stories of people sharing how cotton is the fabric of their life or read about how cotton is produced by checking out some of the other things on the blog.

The post A Colorful Life of Cotton Memories on a Texas Farm appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.