spring plowing

 

The field lay fallow all winter.  Today the sorghum stubble is being chopped down in preparation for spring planting -- if it rains, if seed prices go down, if cotton prices go up --the perennial odds that the farmer faces.

Adcock Place
Hale County, Texas

vanishing point

 

All over the plains, cotton farmers are plowing under this year's hope for crops.  Ever optimistic, they planted with little submoisture and prayed for rain to break the drought.  When the rain came, it brought with it damaging hail and strong winds.  What tender plants weren't beaten down were washed away.  Any that survived that were wind-driven and sand-blasted.  Too late to replant cotton, farmers are trusting in hay-grazer or milo or  else they're off to Ruidoso for the horse-races.  May be better odds there!

 

Hale County, Texas