Cotton Harvest - Part 6

[Southern]

This is the final of my series showing how we harvest cotton. This entry will show various of cotton wagons we use. And the Cotton Gin in action.

This is the most common cotton wagon the farms use. Its your standard wagon with a steerable axle and rear axle.



Here is another common wagon used. This one is a longer than the standard wagon. And has a tandem rear axle.


This one I hadn't yet saw in action. I just saw them at the gin when I took the pics. So I'm not sure of the owner of these. This is a much larger cotton wagon. With tandems on both steer and rear axles. I wouldn't mind building one of these in 64th one of these days.



Now on to the Gin. Here is where the wagons are taken to be unloaded. A man climbs inside and works the suction pipe. There cotton is sucked into the Gin.



Here is the Gin from the inside the building. The gin process the cotton by removing the seeds. And any other trash. The seeds are sent into a silo for other uses.




After the cotton is processed. Its sent to the press. There its turned into a bale.


This is the pipe where the seed is sent to a silo.


Here is a bale of cotton fresh out of the press.


This wraps the bale to protect it. Then its ship out in a truck to a yarn mill or some other factor. There its turned into anything that uses cotton.

[frftoys]

Most people use those wagons in my part for hay wagons now. Cut the sides off and use the flat bed trailer part for hay wagon. There are a few that use wagons still but there is a cockpit in the roof of the gin that the man uses to suck the cotton out of the wagon with. He has a joy stick and it controls the suck pipe. But most gins around here have the dual tandem peerless or harrel wagons. A lot of the gins however frown on wagon use because it slows the gin down and it takes to many people. One on the tractor pulling them and another man in the cockpit running the suck pipe and generally someone having to get the tags off the wagons and record them with the bales that are produced. Looks like a 4 stand gin from what I seen in the picture am I correct? How many bales does the gin, gin a year and what's the turn out bale wise per hour at the gin?

[frftoys]

Side note I do like how theres not a lot of high inputs at that gin versus a lot of gins around here.

[Southern]

This gin is ages old. Been around a very long time. And one of the last ones still going locally. Yes they had about 4 men there working the gin. I'm not sure how many bales they do per season and per hour. Next time I'm in the area, I will ask them.

Only reason why they still do it this way. Is due to lot of farmers got out cotton or never expanded their operation. So the gin never upgraded to handle modules. Why bother since most farmers don't use them.