♪
We are in Calhoun County which is a place where they grow a
lot of cotton and that's why today we're visiting Middling
Cotton Company. And I'm speaking with Bobby Padgett who's the
manager here. Bobby it's interesting because I've known
that cotton is hard crop to grow to get a great
crop. There's a lot that goes into it but the process really
just begins after you grow the crop it doesn't. It does it
does a lot goes into. Weather plays a great part of
it. We've been very fortunate in
this area to have producers that are loyal to cotton and they do
a great job with the crop. But once they get it picked in
their field and it comes in differently now
than it used to. It comes in either a long kind of
compressed modul or these rolls.
And it comes to you in that form and then you've got to get
it in a bail. Correct. We've got a two main
packages that the cotton comes into the gins now are the
rectangle modules that are built out in the field by a
separate piece of equipment called a modul builder. They
came on board probably around nineteen eighty five or so and
they were the mainstay the the main way the cotton came to a
gin until maybe seven or eight years ago. And then at that time
some cotton pickers were produced where they built the
modul onboard on the piece of machinary. And now
we're leaning toward that way. But
you still have both coming here in the first thing that happens
is there unloaded and you put them on a metal conveyor sort
of built where rolles take it down. You take the plastic or
the covering off and then it's funny because it comes in kind
of squished together and a lot of what happens is teasing it
and pulling it apart. That cotton has been compressed
whether it's the the rectangle module or the round ones.
It's fed into the gin on a feeder and the first stage
and there is actually kind of pulling that cotton apart and
getting fluffed up and breaking the wades apart to get it
ready to gin. And from there it goes to a place where you try
to get big pieces of debris or trash and other things out. Tell
me some of the things that happened there and some of
those things you find. First stage is a rock trap or green
bowl trap. That's where immature cotton bowls or
rocks, stones from a field or old pieces of metal fall out
anything that you don't want to get into your gin machinery.
After that rock trap it goes through some inclined cleaners
which are precleaning machines that help remove cotton burrs
larger pieces of cotton stalk or stems and what have you. And
some of that material because what we call trash. The gin
trash or gin byproduct. And ya'll put that out on fields and
it actually turns almost into compost. Doesn't
it eventually. We will let it compost down and take it to be
spread on come fields. Helps to add organic matter in the
fields. And then from there your cotton is getting father it's
getting fluffier and you get a good bit of stuff out but it's
still got more stuff in it. Tthe seeds are still in it. Right.
The raw cotton is what we call it. Thats the fiber that still
has the seeds mixed with it. After the pre
cleaning machines it goes through the gins stand. The
gin stand is the machine were the seed and the lint are
actually separated. And it's interesting because we
use a lot of gravity and there's some of that stuff goes
down below in a basement type catch area doesn't it.
It does the a whole process in the gin
is moved by air. So at the gin stand where the seed is removed
the seed being heavier than the lint falls down below down into
an auger carries it over to a blower to blow it over into a
seed house. And the lint is pulled away from that seed and
moves on to some more cleaners in the gin. The seed itself has
some value because it's high in oil. And so y'all keep that
under controlled conditions with to keep it fresh and I
believe you ship it sometimes across the world. We were
loading containers with cottonseed now. I would say
probably in excess of seventy five percent of this year's
crop will be blown on the containers. Different
destinations South Korea, Saudi Arabia, China. But we're
still our main focus is this wonderful cotton that our
growers have grown. And so now we can start I guess to form it
into the bales. Right. After the lint is is ginned. The gin stand
the seed is removed it goes through some lint
cleaners that would be the final stage of cleaning and
preparation where the lint is kinda coned somewhat. An it's
moved up into the roof area of the gin goes through a machine
there that forms it into a vat. That comes down a long slide to
get into the bale press. And I guess hydraulic
pressure is used there. It really has to be it's highly
compressed. It is. The is the cotton bales will average in
the four hundred eighty five hundred pound range and it's
compressed by a big hydrolic cyclinder. Cotton bale size the
Univ university density is the term used for the bale
now. And it will be fifty four inches by eighteen inches by
twenty four inches. It comes out of the machine of some real
tight strapping. At the press once it is pressed it is then
strapped then next it will move on to the
bagging system. And the same process with the cotton has the
straps applied I beleive some
incisions are made into either side of it and what's the
purpose of that. That is correct. The at the bale press
when that bale is pressed they're are some knife blades
they make an incision on both sides of that bale of cotton.
And at those incisions a sample is
removed from each side of the bale.
As that Bale is packaged every bale has its own
permanent ID number
that is labeled to that bale. An a correspondent ticket is
placed with those samples that come from that bale.
And therefore the sample is sent to Florence, South Carolina.
It's a USDA classing office there. And that is where the
cotton is actually graded. And what are they looking for
in the grading and is that important in the price that
the grower gets. Its very important that that is how the
farmer actually gets paid for his product.
They will be looking for the fiber
length, the fiber strength
and color. You said your
facility can process about fifty bales.
About forty five fifty bales an hour. And over the
course of a year here with the suppliers that you have ya'll
end up with how many bales? Depends on the weather. What
we generally end up with forty to sixty
thousand bale range depending on if you had a good growing season
or now. And their stored here and you know from that tag
exactly where each individual bale originated don't you. Yes
ma'am. And that's important because
you said it's amazing that I was thinking that of mill of a
company that wanted to produce a certain product might want to
get all cotton from one farm. But you said that's not true.
Not necessarily. We can if we're loading a a van we could
put any where eighty eight ninety bales of cotton in each
trailer. And those bales may be
scattered over twenty thousand different bales.
That's really a lot of drawers
to open and close, so you are moving with forklifts
tons and tons of cotton to get exactly what the consumer the
purchaser wants. Correct. You know that would depend on the
type of material that would be woven
they will be looking for different weights of of bales,
different grades of cotton. That put all this together to come
up with the end product. Gosh so this is a facility that during
the time when you're the cotton is being processed and run and
baled y'all are working twenty four seven. We run twenty
four hours a day. We do shut down on Sunday morning at
seven AM. We crank up at two PM on Sunday afternoon.
We shut down basically during the church hours. Other that
we run twenty four hours a day. Your equipment here came from
Savannah Georgia I believe. Our equipment was made by Lummus gin
machinery and they are headquartered in Savannah,
Georgia. And so after you finally can feel like you can
take a breath with getting all the cotton moved out. You've got
some pretty fancy equipment that needs maintenance. A
lot of moving parts, a lot of barings, alot of brushes and
saws in a cotton gin. We do a quite extensive bit of gin
work, machinery work every year.
This is a big important product for South Carolina agriculture
and we're kind of in the center of it here. Ya'll are connected
with other gins in the area I believe and ya'll have an
association that focuses on safety and quality.
There there is an association with the southeastern cotton
ginners association there
very good organization. They push quality products in
this region and there very safety oriented. And the
majority of the gins in not only in this region but in the
southeast of members of southern southeastern. Well you
have given us a glimpse into a fascinating part of a product
with a long history and importance in the south. Thank
you Bobby Padgett. Your quite welcome. Thank you.