In June, I helped organize a meeting for the office and that’s when I got the chance to meet Darren Brown, a cotton farmer in the Missouri Bootheel (that small part of Missouri near the Mississippi River, Arkansas and Tennessee). Love that he was willing to stick with me through cotton harvest!

Since I hit the highway to and from my hometowns of Memphis & St. Louis so often, I can’t help but take a look from the highway. Knowing Darren was such a character and was willing to share the good, the bad and the ugly with me as his planting season was wrecked by bad weather when we met, I kept his phone number handy and would check in throughout the season.

The Bootheel crop went from one that was ragged and worrisome to being one of a lot of promise.

As I launched Hundred Percent Cotton, I stopped in the Bootheel on a drive back from Memphis and shot a short video I used on some of the social media sites. The crop looked good but I was waiting to hear from farmers and I wondered how cotton harvest would go. I texted Darren asking about harvest as a friend from Canada had told me she’d never seen cotton in the field and I thought maybe we could get there.

We didn’t make it, but Darren was nice enough to send me some video clips. I had to share.

If that’s not enough of cotton at harvest to make you happy, you may really enjoy these photos from a couple of years ago. Some of my favorite cotton harvest photos of all time were taken in the Bootheel! This one was taken at Charles Parker’s farm!

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