After writing more than 100 blog posts on cotton, it can be fun to watch posts keep showing up in my stats. There are a few posts that seem to show up frequently. They are posts that help explain things people may be interested in or that people find here or there and want to share with others. Since I moved the blog from my previous webhost (note to all – I suggest you steer clear of inmotion hosting), I think its’ really interesting to see which posts are getting the most traffic! Here are my Top 10 posts about my favorite fiber — cotton! 

Cotton 101: What does a cotton plant or field look like?

I love that my top viewed cotton post was something I put together as a response to a friend’s tweet two years ago! The friend was asking whether it was possible he was seeing cotton in the field when he was far from his Midwestern home. It was! I wrote a post including photos from planting, early season, mid-season, fruiting, harvest time and post harvest. With each photo I talk through some of the key things happening on cotton farms.

Top 10 Cotton States in Area, Production, Yield & Value

This is a newer post — written in August 2012 — and contains some key numbers about cotton by states. The data included in this post include:

• Top 10 Cotton States in Acreage / Area to Harvest in 2012
• Top 10 Cotton States in Production / Total Number of Bales in 2012
• Top 10 Cotton States Per Acre Production / Yield in Pounds Per Acre in 2012
• Value of Cotton by State

Since those are 2012 numbers, I am thinking I will do similar posts on an annual basis. I did a look forward to 2013 cotton acres a bit ago that seems to be really popular.

Cotton 101: How a Cotton Gin Works

We all learned about cotton gins and Eli Whitney in elementary school but somewhere along the way, a bunch of us have forgotten what a cotton gin is for since then. The gin is where cotton farmers take their crop to have the cotton lint separated from the seed so it can go to textile mills and become clothes, towels, etc.

What’s the Fabric of our Lives About? Why Advertise Cotton?

I love when I am watching TV and I hear someone singing “the touch the feel of cotton, the fabric of our lives.” In fact I love it so much, that it is sometimes my ringtone! But what leads Hayden Pannettiere or Zoe Deschanel to sing about cotton and who pays them to do it? Seems that’s something other people have wondered before and they search Google to find out. Some of them find my blog in the process.

Why Would a Farmer Put a Sign on a Cotton, Corn or Soybean Field?

When you drive down the backroads of America, or even the interstate in rural areas, people sometimes see a sign on the edge of a farm field. Some fo us aren’t sure what those are for and some make assumptions about what they mean. But farmers do that as a sign for each other, this post helps explain all of that.

Cotton 101: Can you eat cotton or cottonseed?

People will joke about being so hungry they could eat something as unappetizing as cardboard, but could you ever eat cottonseed if you were really hungry? Its a yes and no answer that you may want to know more about before biting in.

Understanding the Boll Weevil’s Impact Looking Forward

The mean ol’ boll weevil is probably the one cotton bug that more people have heard of than any but for those of us in the US, we should know it’s not even native to the US! It came here years ago and American farmers want it to go home to Central America. Here’s what’s on the minds of those farmers as they look to the future.

Cotton 101: What’s Cottonseed Used for?

Products made with cotton fiber / lint is really well understood. Most of us have cotton sheets & towels, jeans & t-shirts, etc. But what happens to cottonseed when it leaves the cotton gin? Well there are several things.  

Cotton 101: Facts about Cotton — The Crop & Products

This is a post that provides some of the trivia — bits and pieces of things that I think are interesting about cotton. Yeah, I am a total cotton geek!

A Million Bales of Cotton Impact From One Small Town

When a cotton gin in Arkansas hit the milestone of ginning one million bales of cotton, it got me thinking about the contributions of this small town that most Americans had never heard of. How much cotton is one million bales and how many pieces of clothing would that make for folks in a big city?

What am I missing?

Looking at all of that,

The post Top 10 Blog Posts About Cotton in 2013 appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

One of the things I really got used to the last several years is seeing cotton seed and plants throughout the season. Its amazing how much I miss it when I live somewhere else. I’ve lived other places before and was able to keep up on the crop and with social media, I have lots of people willing to help me stay up-to-date on the crop in various areas, but its not the same. So when I was back in Memphis recently, I decided to take the backroads for a while rather than popping on the Interstate and making a bee-line out of town. I didn’t see many cotton fields on this trip, but once I was able to row a field (that means see rows of plants from the highway), I turned in and decided to take some photos and soak up a little of my favorite fiber!

Related articles

• Planting Considerations
• Thinking through Selecting Cotton Varieties
• Planting Cotton in California
• What does a cotton plant look like?
• more related posts on the Cotton 101 page

The post Cotton 101: Saw My First Cotton Plants for the Season appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

As you may have seen, I am asking various people who love cotton to guest post for the blog. Today’s photos were meant to be a wordless Wednesday post  but I turned a bit more wordy. Ooops! The photos were sent by farmer Travis Fugitt (@TFugitt on Twitter) who knows this is my first planting season in a very long time where I don’t have cotton going in the ground within a few miles of my home. He has been nice enough to share the excitement of planting season through sending me photos via both Twitter and Facebook. There is always something happening on Travis’ Bakersfield, CA area farm as they grow quite a few crops. This year he’s growing corn, safflower, cotton, alfalfa, carrots, cabbage, onions, sweet corn, blackeyed peas, garbanzo beans, garlic, wheat, oats and milo. I hope you enjoy Travis’ photos and that my captions and text help explain what he’s sharing!

The 2012 cotton crop of Deltapine cotton is being planted today (April 6) in sunny CA!! This is the view Travis sees when he looks out the rear window of the tractor’s cab at the planter. 

Looking out the windshield, Travis is showing us he’s using a 6 row planter — you can see he’s already planted rows on either side of him. The planter makes a small cut into the soil places the seed & presses the soil together. 

Seeing the field from the driver’s seat was awesome…. also appreciate that Travis took time to share the fact he was planting the brand of seed I’ve worked with since 1996 — Deltapine! Here are photos of the bags he was planting.

Deltapine Cotton Seed – “Dedicated to cotton, committed to you. We bring innovation and proven high performance to every cotton seed you plant. Cotton is our heritage. Peace of mind is the result. No other brand is so deeply committed to farmers and the future of cotton.”

The end of the seed bag contains a lot of information for farmers to refer to. Among the information you can see is the variety he’s planting (this is an experimental variety that contains the proven traits of Bollgard 2 and Roundup Ready Flex traits to help manage insect & weed pests), the lot number, when & where it was produced & quality tested as well as the number of seed per pound & bag. 

He even took time to share what a pretty cotton harvest they had last season with this photo from December 2011.

December 2011 cotton harvest

Learn more about planting cotton from these Cotton 101 posts:

• Cotton 101: Planting Considerations
• Cotton 101: Things Farmers Think Through in Selecting Cotton Varieties
• Cotton 101: What does a cotton plant or field look like?

The post Planting Cotton in California appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Recently, when I wrote a blog post about the fact farmers are the ones paying for the ads that support the fabric of our lives campaign, a cotton farmer from the Texas High Plains left a comment on my Facebook page. I’ve been thinking about it since. He said:

“Few people have any idea how much cotton means to our lives. Last week I helped with the funeral of a man whose ground we have farmed for the past 23 years. I had a boll of cotton in my pocket through the service. In our home we have cotton in a vase like most folks would have flowers… Thank you for all you do to spread the word of the fabric of our lives!!!”

Since I started my blog in 2009 I have written a bunch of blog posts over the last year or two trying to help tell the story of cotton. I even tried to put the basics of the crop in a cotton 101 series of posts. I have been able to talk about all sorts of things but I keep thinking something is missing and I realized, its the stories of other people…. people like Steve who have spent most of their lives growing the fiber and people like a friend who told me that one of the things that reminds her of her dad who died too young is a paisley handkerchief or a bride-to-be who had her daddy grow the perfect crop to surround her nuptials. These people all feel the fabric of our lives in a way that their voices should be heard. I want to share them here on the blog too in a series of guest posts!

Why Write a Guest Post

Whether the cotton connection you have is a fashion show or helping it grow, I’d love to have a glimpse of it here on my blog! I want to celebrate the incredible people who are involved in our favorite fiber’s path to market as well as the ones who enjoy making cotton products a part of their lives. Something so simple connects us all.

I’m thinking about friends who had cotton in their wedding arrangements, people who take photos of their kids out in the crop every year, connecting back to family stories from generations ago. There’s the cotton farmer in California who gave his wife Pima flowers on their first date, cotton ginners who spent months getting the crop ginned, designers who made a classic clothing item new again, textile workers who take pride in making thick cotton towels. If you remember your daughter’s first fashion show and the great cotton jumper she wore, or that blanket that was needed for you to sleep…. the concert shirt you feel 18 again in or that pair of Wranglers George Strait wore when you saw him in concert. I’d like you to share your story about how you connect with cotton. (As you can see here, I regularly share stories of cotton from my cotton 101 series to how much I love hoodies!)

Surely you have some really happy memories that would be fun to share, or something near and dear to your heart that will touch the hearts of the people who read what gets posted here. I know a lot of you don’t share your stories on a blog or YouTube everyday. This would be a great way to just dip your toe in.  I’d love to have a bunch of people share their stories through my blog. And I’ll link them up with this logo I made up.

If you are willing to help me celebrate cotton in a series of posts here on my personal blog, shout either here, on the blog’s Facebook page or send me an email to guestpost at janiceperson dot com (written this way to try & reduce spam). Feel free to tell any friends you think would be interested to join us too! I’d love to have a few posts each week for a couple of months but have to say, this could really be a great series of posts for far longer than a month since there are so many incredible people who have close relationships with cotton! I’ve already written as much here as you’d be committing to!

How to Write a Guest Post

If you haven’t written a blog post before, don’t worry. Its a snap! Here are a few things to get you going:

• Think about the story you want to share & start writing it down! If you are nervous about what to write or how much to write, don’t be. There is no real rule (yes, this is part of the reason I love blogging!) A guideline to consider for length is 500 words, but really you want to tell a complete story so shorter or longer is fine. Remember the people who read this blog have a wide range of backgrounds, it may be good to reread the post & think about whether you are using any words you may want to explain. If you don’t write a lot, maybe you want to ask someone to give it a look. I am willing to help you be sure your best foot is put forward if you like.
• Find a few photos that help tell the story. With the wonders of digital, its amazing what you can do for photos. If you are talking about an event, we’d love to see it. If you refer to that poodle skirt your mom wore in high school, we’d love to see it too! Snapping a quick photo with your mobile phone is an option, you don’t have to have a really expensive camera though with a few folks I’m sure I’ll have great photos, there is a full spectrum for a reason.
• Prepare a short bio with links to your social media sites as applicable. And a photo.
• Send it on in! You can get in the cue by sending to jplovescotton at janiceperson dot com.
  

Any Questions?

Guest Posts Written for the Series (so Far)

Why would a farmer plant GMO cotton?

Cotton is the Fabric of the Classroom for @HouseAgBuilt

Wanted: Job that Pays Well for Napping / Cocooning in Comfort

It been a couple of years since a college kid seemed to stumble into my social media world. Okay, other college kids stumble in, but this one — Kelly Rivard took up residency! I got to know Kelly through Twitter (@kmrivard) and before long she was appearing all around me! Facebook, Skype, the now nearly […] Continue Reading

The post What is it that you love about cotton? Please join a series of cottony goodness! appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I took this photo last Friday and thought it was a beautiful shot to share on the blog. I mean to get it up on Wordless Wednesday, but the harried life didn’t let me get it up here in time. Then I had it written and a technical glitch killed it. But I refuse to give in! I really want to share this.

The photo is of me holding two five-lock cotton bolls. When I looked at the photo on my phone later I was struck by a few things.

• Sheer joy — The farmer I was visiting picked these as we walked along his cotton crop. I hopped back in the car and he reached over to hand three of the beauties to me saying “here are some five-lock bolls for ya” with a HUGE smile across his face. We were both thrilled (yes, it was Deltapine cotton).
• The beauty of five locks? As I started writing this post, I realized I had forgotten to put “lock” in my working cotton dictionary. So let me explain locks for those who may not know what they are looking at. Each of these has five small sections, you can see them here much like cotton balls pulled together. But remember, this is right off the plant. Each lock has several seed in it and the fiber is connected to the seeds. More locks tend to mean higher yield potential in the field. I’d say its similar to finding more 4 bean pods in a soybean field.  (Popular culture aside: counting and locks reminds me of the Sammy Hagar lyrics “one, two, three lock box”)
• Two such different sizes — The difference in size seemed striking to me. The boll at the top part of the photo is either from the top part of a cotton plant or out toward the end of one of the fruiting branches further down on the plant. The larger boll was further down on the plant and toward the mainstem.
• The photo itself — I am surprised how good a photo taken on my Blackberry looks when it was taken inside a vehicle! With the black background it looks like I was doing it intentionally when in reality it was a quickly snagged shot between stops in the field at the end of a long day.

What do you notice about the photo?

The post The Beauty of Five-Lock Cotton Bolls appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.