I am always looking for new resources to share with teachers on my favorite fiber! Years ago, a friend from the Mississippi Delta wrote A Cotton Pickin’ Story for Toddlers. There are also a number of publications available through the National Cotton Council. But I just can get enough of video! And when a friend sent this cotton educational video connected to TED, well, obviously I had to sit down and soak it up!

Cotton fits so many different courses of study, so hearing about history and how cotton offers such strength and flexibility. I love thinking about Incas using cotton as breast plates and other clothing for warriors. It’s why some of the most dangerous jobs still feature cotton so prominently in the uniforms and clothing guidelines.

There is a lot of information built in here including how cotton physiology works with seeds inside the cotton boll producing the fiber. Understanding what a cotton plant looks like and how the fiber inside a young cotton boll pushes to elongate and showing how the cell walls build out. And this is part of the reason Pima cotton and Egyptian cotton is so popular. Some of these pieces of fiber strength & length are tested in HVI labs.

The kinds of uses go through so many products we use. Sure we think about our favorite t-shirts and jeans but how many of us think about the uses like diapers and coffee filters? Students will once they watch this!

A Personal Cotton Aside

From the opening, when they quote none other than BB King about cotton being a “force of nature.” I am in! Close friends and family all know that BB has been a major music influence in my life.

While I was living in the Mississippi Delta for a bit more than a decade, I would regularly see BB play, but I also saw him when I lived in New York and Memphis. But it wasn’t until I lived in Mississippi that I heard him talk about cotton as he broke ground for a museum that would bear his name. That museum is in an old cotton gin! He talked about how the cotton gin was both symbolic and a physical touchstone for him and for so many others in the Delta explaining cotton is a big part of who Southerners are. And he even took time in the dreaded summer heat to ask for the much needed rain understanding farmers needed the break. You can see photos from my run-ins with him over the years on my other site, JPlovesLIFE

The post Great Cotton Educational Video appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Challenges on the internet come and go pretty quickly. I remember getting some friends at work to do the ice bucket challenge. This week as Dolly Parton put out a meme that quickly became the latest viral challenge. I had to think about how clearly it fit cotton, my favorite fiber. Next thing I knew, I had a cotton meme!

In case you haven’t seen the Dolly Parton post I am talking about, here you go:

View this post on Instagram

Get you a woman who can do it all

A post shared by Dolly Parton (@dollyparton) on Jan 21, 2020 at 10:02am PST

Dolly definitely has a brand of being able to do it all. She posted that on her Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts and brought so many smiles and made people think. The simplicity of showing how she is many things by putting it in the context of prominent, distinctive online networks that offer really different value.

It’s why memes can be so powerful. You can wrap up so many things into a simple image or collection of images with a few words. People can’t help but share in the fun.

Next thing you knew people were calling it the Dolly Parton Challenge and doing various versions. I had friends who did them for themselves, pets, brands they work for and more. And I thought people should know to get a fiber that can do it all too!

Cotton Meme: The Fiber that Can Do It All

If you read Hundred Percent Cotton Often, you have seen article after article about the various strengths of the fiber but putting into a simple format that would resonate on Twitter and Instagram…. I had to really ponder things. Here’s the cotton meme I came up with:

It probably doesn’t need much explanation, but a bit may be helpful. So here’s the thought behind each photo:

• LinkedIn — When it comes to business, cotton has you covered! In fact, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing reports that US bills are printed on 75% cotton and 25% linen stock. And if you look at what you can do with a bale of cotton (about 500 lbs), you could make 313,600 $100 bills!
• Facebook — Facebook is for fun and family. What’s more fun than t-shirts, jeans, digging in the dirt and a big old pair of underwear? Also, when things get a bit more serious, talking about the environment is more fun when you can talk about soiling your undies (to show soil health).
• Instagram — Lifestyle and beautiful photography are what makes the day on Instagram and as that sunset shows and as cotton farmers know, you can get a great lifestyle with the natural fiber AND harvest photos are often stunning!
• Tinder — Looking for love? Well polyester sheets would have you in all the wrong places! Obviously you are going to want some awesome cotton sheets!

Cotton really is the fiber that can do it all! Think I’m missing anything? May need to make a second cotton meme too!

The post This Cotton Meme Suggests You Get a Fiber that Can Do It All appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Cotton isn’t exactly the first thing to come to mind if you are asked to list crops that go farm-to-plate. That may be in the process of changing for more people this month as the FDA approved a ultra low gossypol cottonseed for human and animal consumption. The research on this has been undergoing at Texas A&M led by researcher Dr. Keerti Rathore. I met Dr. Rathore long ago and even wrote about the promise of reduced gossypol cottonseed a year ago when the USDA approved the product for farming.

This brings a few things to mind for me that I would guess are pretty uncommon.

What is gossypol?

Gossypol is a naturally occuring chemical for cotton plants — it’s in the plant’s leaves, stems, seeds, etc. It helps protect the plant from some of the insect pests that love to damage the plant. I am always amazed by the ways nature is cool, but you have to admit that is cool. The bummer is though, that gossypol can be toxic to some animals and to people.

Why feed cottonseed to animals & people?

This one is hard to look at from the place where a lot of us sit. We have a multitude of foods available if you were lucky enough to be born in the developed world. And farmers have lots of choices in livestock feeds that keep those of us who eat meat satisfied.

That isn’t the case in many parts of the developing world. In fact, there are hundreds of thousands of people who live on cotton farms in the developing world. These farms are frequently subsistence farms and while they may have vegetable gardens and/or grain, the addition of another food source for the family and/or livestock, could be life-saving or life-changing. I am not overstating to say it could be a total god-send for people who have a goat, a couple of chickens, etc. 

Would I eat cottonseed?

I am firmly in the “I’d eat it” camp. In fact, I recently fixed myself avocado toast (thanks to visiting an avocado farm) and mixed a little bit of the cilantro-flavored cottonseed oil in with the avocado. But realistically, I know I have so many food choices, that I probably wouldn’t end up eating it directly. I think it could probably be useful in producing some of the meats I eat though. 

The post New Ultra Low Gossypol Cotton Food Product Approved by FDA appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I’m not sure when I first became familiar with Garrison Keillor’s work, but it seems like I’ve always known him. In some ways, I think my watching The Waltons as a kid somehow merged with his Prairie Home Companion. I mean, the feeling of nostalgia and simplicity was probably the tie. And the image of the Waltons listening to radio & his big following without video. Anyway, a friend sent me the email he’d gotten thanks to his subscribing to Garrison Keillor’s website & I dove right in.

It is kind of heartwarming & funny how he starts the post talking about how his wife is always pushing him to do better for the planet. Most of us are striving to leave the planet we call home better than we found it and yet, most of us also know someone who is far more committed to the idea than us. We have a range of things that come with that social license… sometimes we subscribe full, others we have a different view and still others we ignore. I’ve known more than a few people who dated, married or somehow became connected to someone who wanted them to give up meat based on the environmental footprint as they understand it. But I also know a lot of people who have very different reads on that. And when Keillor lets us all get a shared laugh at the reality most of us have an omnivorous diet, even if that means sneaking meat, I was ready to move on.

And then I realized why the friend thought of me. Keillor writes about her comments on cotton with a sense of exasperation cause he, like me has a deep love of cotton:

But the other day she told me that cotton is a bad fabric, that to grow the cotton to make three pairs of jeans uses more water than a person will drink in a lifetime. And dreadful chemicals are employed in the making of denim. “What am I supposed to wear? Silk?” I said. She told me that silk is more sustainable. So is linen.

But cotton?? I love cotton. Jeans are my uniform. I walk down the street in old faded jeans and a black T-shirt and I am 25 again, a young attitudinous writer.

Unexpectedly on a dark day, light shines through from GarrisonKeillor.com

I would love to personally invite the Keillor couple to go deeper than the ideas that cotton as a fabric is “bad” or that chemicals are “dreadful.” I hope he used literary license. Lots of people have read about the water footprint of cotton and yet few have had the chance to dig into the topic with some depth. I’d like to help Garrison and his significant other (is her name Jenny?) get to know cotton on a deeper level.

I love that Jenny’s advice is to stick with natural fibers — I am certainly a fan! I have some great linen clothes for summer and my hatred of cold weather means I truly love wool in winter. And while some folks will point out polyester uses less water, I think Jenny and I will agree that the footprint of synthetics with a dependence on petroleum takes us down a whole other path. And I am one of those folks who wears jeans several times before putting them in the laundry.

My passion for the natural fiber has led me to spend hundreds of hours with farmers asking them about how the crop is grown. It would also be a chance for me to learn too. I don’t have all the answers on the topic of cotton by any means, but after decades of talking to people who grow the crop, others who design fabrics, and who look at dyes and finishes and more I have found it has been improving leaps and bounds over the past few decades. And, we’d have a great time doing a small tour of some points of interest in the conversation about cotton and we could learn a lot.

A Potential Travel Itinerary

We could start with a farm visit. If Jenny & Garrison are ready to go, I hope to spend tomorrow/Friday in the Missouri Bootheel showing a friend what cotton plants look like. We’ll have a chance to ask a farmer about how he utilizes water on the farm. We plan to see Darren and he has some irrigation but also has some dryland cotton. What’s amazing is how precise irrigation is and how farmers understand the soils they have, things that they can do to help the soil capture rainfall and retain it for use later. They pay close attention to flow rates of water and more. Those are improvements that have been happening throughout the decades I’ve been learning from farmers. PS — Darren sent a photo to make sure I keep focus on my visit.

But I should mention we may not be able to go because he may be rained out. And rain on cotton at harvest can cause some tough issues in terms of soil health, crop quality and yield. And while it isn’t exactly Lake Wobegon, there’s a YouTuber in Minnesota who grew & made his own tshirt!

We could learn about fiber use after the farm. How’s Cary, North Carolina? or maybe Lubbock, Texas? When cotton moves from the farm, it goes through ginning & warehousing before you get into carding, spinning, etc. Eventually you get to the finishing and dying. It’s awesome to see this up close and personal. understand how it is done because each company is in improvement mode too. I like seeing this in the labs at Cotton Inc. or Texas Tech first, but then seeing it done at scale with denim or towels… that’s amazing.

One of the things I have been impressed by, is how many scientists are looking at ways to make all of these processes better environmentally. One of the innovations that really blew me away on a visit was the way the worn look can now be achieved with lasers (yes LASERS!) instead of chemicals.

And if they want to come to St. Louis with me, I can introduce them to a researcher at the Danforth Center I met a few years ago as I had the chance to see what plant breeding is doing to see if indigo can make a resurgence!

Lots to Talk About

In my experience, this diving deeper offers so much to all of us. And while I have studied up some on why people have the impression that cotton is so water intensive, I am always amazed at how much more there is to be learned. And quite frankly I learn more by talking with people who have different questions or presuppositions than I do!

I have the feeling that Jenny and I agree that the constant purchasing of clothes for right now rather than thinking about the perfect t-shirts that you will wear long-term (Have mercy I love a good black v-neck! Have had some well made ones for close to 10 years!) Also like dresses that can be worn across seasons and dressed up or down to easily help reduce our personal footprint. And those things keep the commercial bug at bay.

The post Dreaming of a Cotton Trip with Garrison Keillor & His Wife appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

Years ago I laughed as my niece was picking cotton and dreamed of her mom making her some socks or something with the fiber. Well, if that niece was on the How to Make Everything team, she may have figured out a way to make it happen AND get video throughout the process.

Watching this video made me laugh a bit cause there were some things I knew really should have been thought about in advance (reminder cotton doesn’t like too much rain). But mostly the video made me think about how much goes into the stuff we have. It takes a lot to make a t-shirt! 

The Premise: Hard to Know What it Takes to Produce Common Items

If you aren’t familiar with How to Make Everything you may want to check out a few of their videos. They break down something as simple as a new t-shirt but walk you through all the complex pieces of work it takes to happen. This episode is especially useful for people who purchase those cheap $5 t-shirts but may not think much about what it takes to make t-shirts and the true cost of cheap clothing. As someone who advocates for a better t-shirt rather than simply more in my wardrobe (confession I still have too many), and someone who has seen the various processes at a bigger scale, I am beyond impressed someone would be so committed to the idea that they spent three years working on the project! 

It’s collapsed down to a really good 20 minutes if you want to see what it would take to produce a cotton t-shirt…. all the way from growing to sewing and wearing.

It’s Hard Growing Cotton

I love how honest he is on why it took so long to get this project done. Trying to grow cotton in a garden is hard but growing it in Minnesota…. that’s a few extra levels of hard. I lived in New York years ago and grew a cotton plant in my office. Although we all enjoy how much longer the days are in summer when we live in northern areas, reality is the number of days where that sunlight is paired with the temperatures cotton thrives in is not enough.

The things I saw that I thought hmmm…. I started seeds similarly to the way he did, small tray or pot, and I moved it to a five gallon bucket under heat lights later trying to give the tap root a good shot. Having some sand mixed into that potting soil could have helped too since cotton doesn’t like a lot of water on it (farmers say cotton doesn’t like wet feet). Seeing him try to scoop up cotton plants out of deep water…. all I could think was bless his heart. Cotton farmers know the pain though they may have looked for a different patch of ground and planted soybeans there.

The Knitting Process vs Weaving

Did you get the part where they actually built looms? I haven’t thought much about the world without knit fabrics…. I mean t-shirts, yoga pants, etc are so awesome in their stretch because the way the machinery works… so even though it is 100% cotton, it has that nice physique hugging quality.

Seeing them weave fabric and him make himself fit? Priceless!

Options to See Dirt to Shirt

There are some farmers who work with specific suppliers in the U.S. who are trying to help the textile industry here rebound. Ronnie Burleson is a farmer in North Carolina I met years ago when friends and I toured his farm (Brian of The Farmer’s Life wrote a post about his first cotton farm visit). Ronnie grows and his cotton is spun, dyed, knitted all nearby in the Cotton of the Carolinas products. They call it going dirt to shirt, a spin on farm to plate that fits. I’m guessing those shirts would be a perfect fit with the North Carolina Wrangler jeans.

The post What would it take to make your own t-shirt? appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I love harvest time and while we have a while before we will be picking cotton in Missouri, a time-lapse video of cotton boll opening from the Texas Gulf Coast sure is getting a lot of people excited about what is to come!

Over the years, we have shared about cotton plant physiology quite a bit — creamy white flowers turning pink and into a boll that does the Jiffy Pop dance to open. Well, this year, Justin Roberts (@horned_ranch on Twitter who is a crop consultant in Sinton, TX) caught a boll opening on video. He has rocked the Twitterverse for sure! Just check it out.

Justin says it took a few days for the boll to go from initial cracking to fully open. It also takes some good sunshine and heat units.

Justin has worked in cotton quite a while — he reminded me we had worked on some projects in Georgia years ago. He has a depth of knowledge in cotton genetics and physiology that makes him naturally curious (he’s say nerdy) about things like this so he set up his camera and let it go for a while. I’m always a fan of this sort of thing but time-lapse video of cotton? Sign me up! I love that you can see the strong sun of mid-day and the shadows of morning and evening come and go.

We laughed about how the breezes coming off the Gulf of Mexico make this branch dance more than you’d necessarily expect. But with 10 years in Texas, he’s grown used to the breezes and wind. I suggested he could set up a stake or brace and duct tape the plant to it (no, I never expected him to agree).

It’s interesting to realize that way geography hits when Justin points out the proximity to the Gulf means there is really no measurable irrigation — wells there pump saltwater!

The post Time-Lapse Video of Cotton Boll Opening appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

One of the most interesting parts of having such a clear niche in blogging is having people contact me about specific things they want to know about cotton. While some of those questions are about jobs or things I really can’t solve, I love helping diagnose problems. You may have seen the post about why a cotton boll was so tiny a few years ago. The recent conversation about planting container cotton plants though, really made me stretch my mind muscles beyond just the whether cotton can be grown in a backyard garden!

Email About Container Cotton I Received

The email I received asking me a deep question follows. Please note, I’m not including the name, etc cause I’m not sure that would be cool with them. However, I did say I wrote them such a long reply I thought I may turn it into a post.

Hello Janice, I live in central North Carolina. Last year my girlfriend and I picked two plants from a farmers field nearby and put them in potting soil black plastic pots at out respective homes for decoration. After winter I pulled 16 seeds from my one boll and planted them in the same pot next to other flowers. This spring – NOTHING grew. I mean NOTHING. No clover, no weed grass – just bare soil. It is so barren it looks like the soil was poisoned. Pots next to it were alive with weeds and spontaneously generate new plants even after hand weeding. Same soil, same care (none), same feeding (none). Is this cotton a Monsanto GMO plant with ‘Roundup’ springing forth from its corps?

Thanks. BTW: The farmers field has NO volunteer weeds among the cotton.

Reading that, you can tell, the person writing it was perplexed. There are a lot of things I wanted to know as I read it because I think we both came at it with really different backgrounds and ideas. Over the years, I’ve found if I can ask people several questions, I probably can give them a better answer.

Questions I Asked & Answers I Received

Really, I enjoy getting messages from real people who have read something here & decided to share or ask questions. (I’m not a fan of the robo requests for placing a post here.) Here’s what I sent back:

I’ll be glad to help think through what may have happened. I have some questions that will let me be sure I understand.
— When you say you picked a cotton plant, did you just cut the stalk and put the stalk in a pot or did you dig up the roots? 
— When you picked the plant, was the cotton boll you collected seed from already open or was it a green boll that cracked open later? Any chance you have photos? 
— Was the plant/seed kept inside your home over winter or left outside? 
— The pot you had the cotton plant in…. you said it was in potting soil. Have you used the soil for other things before or was it fresh from the bag. 

This may make a good blog post. And where in NC are you? I have family in the Asheville & Charlotte areas. Love the state. 

I have to admit, I wasn’t sure I’d get a reply, but I did. One-by-one, all my questions got answered:

1. We neither cut the stalk nor dug it up – we pulled up the plants by the trunk including the roots. They were runt plants at the edge of the field by the road. 
2. Yes the cotton was open and the cotton boll showing nicely. 
3. Both the plants overwintered alongside the driveways with the other potted plants – which always come back in the spring. 
4. Yes the potting soil was previously used for flowers such as sweet william or hemp plants. 

I went out this morning to look again – still the soil in that pot is bare – but in pots to the left and right are rich with grasses / weeds – greenery on either side of the pots that the cotton was in. 

Very mysterious. Where are YOU Janice? Want to come see?

My Response Got Really Long

It was obviously mysterious, but I had a lot of information that I thought could help. As I started my reply, it really was going long. I have to confess, I thought hard about ways to simplify it. Make it shorter. Easier to read. I did the best I could but it was still long. I share it here in case you are following and have questions:

Thanks for the offer of a visit but I’m in the middle of the country… not in NC often unless I have a detailed agenda with family. I am sure you understand that doesn’t leave time for random cotton plant checks There is a state cotton specialist in Raleigh if you want to talk to someone local. https://www.ces.ncsu.edu/profile/guy-collins/ 

I am trying to figure out what some of the issues are and there are really a couple of big possibilties: 

1) The seed wasn’t mature so it wouldn’t germinate. There are a few things that can happen to plants during the growing season — maybe the plants didn’t get enough heat units during the period when the seed was forming, maybe moisture in the fall led the seeds to rot, etc. In fact, because that is so likely, each state and seed companies have testing facilities that pull samples of commercial seed and test it. And the plants that help bag seed also frequently use various screening processes to determine whether the seed is the right color or weight, etc. There is also a question of whether the seed went through dormancy which is the way the seed’s energy moves from harvest to gain the energy needed to sprout in the spring. This post explains some of the problems. 

2) Planting conditions may have been challenging. Cotton is a somewhat fussy plant. Potting soil can really retain water and cotton seedlings want just a bit of water. They typically do better in sandier soils than potting soils are. You also want to think about the depth the seed was planted. Cotton likes a good bit of space — farmers usually plant a couple of seed every 6 inches. It also likes a specific set of temperatures to emerge so you want to make sure the soil is 65 degrees or so, 6-9 inches deep.  More on planting.

I’d bet one of those two things is the reason the seed didn’t emerge. The other question you raised was about why nothing else is growing in the pot. That’s a real puzzle for me too. The one idea you mentioned was whether that could be related to the seed. I’ve never heard of anything with cotton seed having an impact on other things growing. In fact, cotton farmers build full weed control programs using cover crops, etc to protect young cotton plants from the weeds and grasses that grow up with them. This post will help you understand some of that. 

The way you asked the question about Roundup, I can tell you have heard about GMO crops. You may not be familiar with the way they work. The Roundup Ready cotton you mention is popular in North Carolina so the seed may have carried the trait. The way that trait works, a single gene was found in aquatic environments that made Roundup or glyphosate was ineffective on it so some of Monsanto’s scientists was added to a cotton plant. I’ve met a bunch of those folks working at the company. The trait allows farmers to spray Roundup on the cotton when weeds and grasses are growing all around and while the vast majority of weeds will be controlled, the cotton (or soybeans) will grow successfully. Farmers usually focus on controlling weeds and grasses early in the season, when plants are small because as they grow, the plants shade out any new plants from growing. 

Understanding all of that, I wonder whether the difference is whether the other plants (all perennials) had attracted pollinators to play on them. That may have accounted for some of the extra things ending up in the same soil. 

I will keep giving this thought. One of the things I wonder is how much of the root structure was there. Cotton’s tap root is usually 3 foot or so on a healthy plant and I’m guessing pulling this was a lot shorter. So that may have impacted the seed’s viability. 

Definitely feel like I wrote a full blog post writing this whole thing out so I am going to see about turning it around. 

Hope this helps! 

And I forgot to remind him about the boll weevil eradication program being a challenge!

Where We Are Now

So, that was a lot to take in. And I’m still thinking about some of the causes — now that I have this all in a blog post, I can get some expert opinions on it too!

My new friend admited I overloaded them a bit. They also decided to do a few things to see what else they can figure out. They will:

• Send a soil sample to the state department of agriculture to be tested.
• See if some other plants will grow in that pot/soil.

The post Diagnosing Problems with Container Cotton Plants appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

While reading New York Magazine, I saw this list of things NYC teens think are cool. It is interesting to see what all stands out to a demographic so different from me, but common ground is cotton. You see that mom jeans and denim jackets rate highly in the minds of teens. Seems New York teens realize cotton is cool — especially jeans and denim jackets.

Mom Jeans

Teens provided a lot of ideas on what they like. The brands and fits are something that change more and that’s definitely something teenagers are interested in. The recommendations on brands, a clear understanding of price points and discussion of distressed versus abused denim. The fact that the jeans that get the shoutout are mom jeans though, I confess it makes me chuckle.

While at the mall recently I couldn’t help but notice how high some of the waistlines were, I also remember when this cut was just the way jeans were done. Yes, I am solidly mom age. We had jeans… different colors of jeans for sure but we didn’t have the endless number of fits that are out there now.

I remember when low-cut jeans came out and got lower and lower and the “high rise” jeans started being called “mom jeans.” So now you have teenage girls of Gen Z wearing the jeans that millennials called “mom jeans” when Gex Xers continued wearing the jeans we liked cause 1-inch zippers let us feeling a little over exposed. Everything comes back in style, the big question is what this highwaisted style will be called in the future cause teens have popularized it again… I guess if they take their favorite cut to adulthood, it could simply be a self-professing prophecy.

Denim Jackets

It feels like denim jackets are on people’s minds a lot right now. They rate well with teens and I think part of that is how individualized they can be. There are lots of fits, colors and ways to personalize them with pins & patches. You can spend big dollars on a designer jacket or get one at a local thrift shop. Throwing a jacket on with a tank top and shorts works what you are at the beach & the breeze gets a bit strong or you can wear it over a nice dress (something I love to do year-round).

I think they really cross generations. And My friend Briana and I were at the mall this weekend and she mused about not having a denim jacket (I am still aghast!). In a post last week about the new Shop Cotton effort on Amazon from Cotton Incorporated, I mentioned craving a long denim jacket in the store to add to the white, black and two different colors of blue denim jackets I own and wear frequently.

Although many would suggest it may be too hot to think of any kind of jacket, that only works for the outdoors. Whether at the movies, an office or on a plane, I frequently find myself reaching for a jacket and denim is one of the best!

The post New York Teens Agree Cotton is Cool appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I have to confess, I thought this year was going to be different. If you read the 2019 cotton acreage projections I shared, you may remember that excitement about acres going up. So when I saw that one of my favorite farm Instagrammers would plant their first cotton crop, I had high hopes. Both for the crop and my ability to follow cotton from afar. I could see the photos that were to come and I had visions of her contributing to the blog all year. Just look at this photo she (Lindsay Kimbrell) took of cotton several weeks ago. (And while you are there follow KimbrellFarmPhoto!)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

Future jeans, shirts, sheets, towels or fabric! Hope this crop does well, I can’t wait to watch it! • #Cotton #TexasCotton #FabricOfOurLives #helenaagrienterprises #deltapinecotton

A post shared by Lindsay Kimbrell (@kimbrellfarmphoto) on Jun 1, 2019 at 11:12am PDT

See what I mean? Lindsay is clearly a talented photographer. I appreciate her sending me so many great shots for this story. I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself though…..

Meet the Kimbrells

This post is to introduce you to Lindsay Kimbrell, her husband Todd and their family farm in Itasca, Texas as part of the Farmer Friday series I kicked off a while ago. Before you Google Itasca, it is south of Dallas along I-35.

Lindsay is the one  who keeps me up on what’s happening. She explains the family’s path by saying “My husband started with working on the family land and eventually found his own. He was 18 and rented some land that had been in conservation for years so he had a lot of work to get it ready for crops.”

Todd’s a fifth generation farmer and Lindsay admits he’s really helped her grow her depth of understanding. “I’d say it’s in his genes and his grandfather had a love for farming so was able to provide some good words on a hard day to get him through.”

The Kimbrell’s have been growing grain for the most part but this year seemed a good one to try cotton. “We grew a little bit of cotton back in 2011, which was our first go at it personally. It had been grown before by my husband’s grandpa, but that was many years ago. We recently just rented some land that is great for cotton, so we tried again this spring.”

Texas Blacklands

Texas is broken into several different agricultural regions. And the area where the Kimbrells farm is called The Blacklands. “Our area is very high in farm land,” she explains. “This is called the ‘Blacklands’ because our soil is black and very good for growing. It’s a sort of sweet spot in this area.”

Lindsay says she can’t help but hope grandpa would be really proud of the work they have done and the way the farm has grown. She says part of that has been the knowledge of soils and data.

“Technology is a huge part in our operation,” she says. “Todd is very particular about soil health, planting population and fertilization. He never wants to strip the soil of its health. We leave as much organic matter as we can after a crop. We use precision planting monitors and products to get accurate seed depth and spacing.”

All of this is done with an eye on the future too as they are “growing our operation so the next generation, meaning our children and little brother, can hopefully carry on the legacy.”

The 2019 Cotton Crop

The Kimbrells were looking forward to a first cotton crop. Lindsay points to her love of t-shirts and you can see her enthusiasm for the future in that Instagram post.

Those plants though took a real beating from hail recently. “Unfortunately are first little cotton crop in years is hailed out,” Lindsay says and explains that the insurance process is in the works.

I can remember being surprised by a Dallas hailstorm a few years ago… my car definitely looked worse for the wear and tear. Well, with plants, that tears open the plant tissues. Leaves can be ripped off the plant and it is easy for diseases to get in, photosynthesis is really reduced, some plants are maimed while others are killed.

These are days farmers dread. All their hopes for a field’s reaching full potential fall coming to an end. Some of the other fields are doing better with other crops though. And Lindsay’s excitement for the future is still there. She’s decided to continue to follow through learning more about the process. “The local ginners and I have a great friendship and I plan to still come visit and watch the process and I plan to ask what cotton grown here gets used for!”

Follow Lindsay and Kimbrell Farms

I hope like you feel you’ve gotton a chance to meet Lindsay, Todd and the rest of the Kimbrell family. They have entered the cotton farming world and it hasn’t worked out so far. But 2019 is being pretty hard on farmers regardless of crop with flooding, hail, unseasonably cold weather and more. In the Blacklands farmers worry they are too far past the planting window and further north on the High Plains, people are still contemplating planting for the first time. If you want to see how things get resolved for the Kimbrells, check out their social media. Here are their handles & URLs!

• Twitter: KimbrellFarms06
• Facebook: Kimbrell Farms
• Photography & Instagram: Kimbrellfarmphoto
• Lindsay also has a blog Flip Flops & Row Crops where she occasionally posts about what is happening on the farm and in life in general.

The post Kimbrells First Cotton Crop and It’s Not Gone as Planned appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.

I have to admit, writing about farmers soiling their undies makes me feel like an elementary school kid with the giggles. I can hear classmates coming up with a million ways to use the phrase — Did you soil your undies? Uh, oh teacher, so-and-so soiled his undies. Does it smell when you soil your undies? and so many more things. But we are introducing a pretty important concept in this silly way when we talk about why farmers soil their undies.

What is “soil your undies” about?

The fact that cotton has a great environmental footprint as a natural fiber, breaking down over time, cotton can be recycled in various ways. It has the whole earth-to-earth thing going on.

So knowing all of that, some people wanting to help people better understand their farm’s soil health, created the “Soil Your Undies” campaign. Since then, a variety of agricultural groups have been encouraging farmers to do the “Soil Your Undies” challenge — my friend Brenda Frketich did it last year with a massive pair that the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service gave her.

Brenda and her family grow nuts & grass in Oregon. She made it a fun lesson for her kids too. Got them out in the field to help her dig the hole and fill it. It is funny that a few folks asked if they were her dad’s or something, but really, the oversized ones are nice because it is more challenging and easier to see what happens.

This video from Australia’s Cotton Info explains how they were encouraging farmers across the country to bury a couple of pairs of undies in different places on their farms. The undies are buried in the soil getting good soil to cotton connectivity. The fun comes a couple of months later when the farmers dig them back up!

Don’t worry, there is another video for that too!

The Results of Soiling Your Undies

The variations of soils, weather conditions, microbial activity and more are seen as these undies get dug up! This video shows a scientist in the lab talking about it and I have to admit, his talking about all of this scientifically about the amounts of degradation and how much difference he sees in undies between two well known cotton growing areas of Goondiwindi and Moree.

The findings that he shows really grabs my sense of wonder. The fact that they tested a hypothesis that some young scientists had as well as had someone who was too impatient to wait for the ones Cotton Info was bringing their way and planted their own. Ended up planting a cotton blend and you can really see the difference with the elastane!

Wonder about your soil?

The great thing about this is how easy it is to run tests for yourself.

If you are a farmer, you were given a lot of ideas through the videos on how to pick two different environments to choose between.

If you live in the city? Do you have a raised bed garden? A flower bed that you have covered with mulch? Some place in the backyard? Next to a compost pile? Maybe a school yard?

Would love to see any tests you do! Shoot me an email, share it on social media with #soilyourundies.

Soiling Polyester Undies

After this post went live, I saw that my friend Bill Robertson who works for the University of Arkansas soiled some undies! Love that he put cotton and polyester in comparison… clear to see which one is biodegradable after use.

.@arcottonman in cotton field today doing “soiled undies” demo at .@cottonplantkid farm today to display benefits of cover crops & environmental harm of polyester (plastic) clothes vs cotton. .@CottonInc .@soil_institute .@AginArk pic.twitter.com/98pnHNg7Ch

— AgCouncilofAr (@AgCouncilofAr) July 25, 2019

The post Farmers Have Been Soiling Their Undies. Here’s Why appeared first on Hundred Percent Cotton.