WIP: cotton

Even though I've lived in a city for three decades, I'm still a farmer at heart. Thanks to my MIL (aka my mother-in-law), for the past couple of weeks, I have had a tremendous opportunity to visit the American mid-west, south, and specifically, Florida. I've seen a LOT of American countryside (based on our drive time, at least 60 hours of it). 

Unfortunately, given the current weather, I've also seen a LOT of flooding while driving through Tennessee and Missouri. My thoughts and best wishes are with those folks whose lives are ever changed by the wrath of an especially damaging storm system.

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I grew up on the Canadian prairies, and when we travelled south, it seemed natural that we would spend time in Montana, and the west coast. Alternatively, my in-laws, who are from the east-of-centre part of Canada, travelled toward the eastern coast: the Carolinas, and Florida. On this trip, we retraced the route taken almost forty years ago by my honey's family.

As my early studies in textile sciences took me east (in Canada), the farmer in me encouraged me to love the natural fibres over the man-made fibres. In lectures and textile labs, I leaned the properties of cotton, wool, silk, and other hair and grassy fibres. I saw photos and videos of growth, production, harvest, and manufacturing. I could always relate what I learned to real-life because I've seen dozens of crops and animals grow to fruition and be harvested.

However, I have never, until last week, stood before a cotton field and seen it in real-life. I had never touched unharvested cotton. After travelling past what I think were harvested cotton fields in Georgia, we stopped for gasoline at an Interstate stop. At the gas station, I looked around and saw a field of brown, spotted with white fluff! At first glance, I thought I must be wrong. It was December. Surely, cotton should be harvested by now.

As we got closer to the field (on our way back onto the Interstate), I discovered that yes, it was a cotton field. I was dumbfounded. I hadn't searched out a field, it simply appeared. I was thrilled.

What a beautiful crop! The cotton fibres are wonderfully soft. What a tremendous surprise (for me) that punctuated a wonderful vacation.