27 Nov Sherry: Daily task

Rosharan, Texas — Hi y’all! Our weather has been good, in the mid to low 80s with no rain in the forecast. We are still dealing with high humidity, though.

Cleaning the row units happens every time we run the machines. We clean the row units at night, without any lights. If we have lights on, the bugs and mosquitoes will attack. We face the row units into the wind. It’s a little cooler, but mainly it’s so the leaves don’t blow on us. They’ll blow back into the machine. We clean them at night after running them because, if we wait until the morning, the cotton, dirt, leaves and grease begin to ferment, and it smells awful. Nobody wants to smell like that for the rest of the day.

Each row unit has a side door and front door, so everything gets done twice on each row unit. We begin by opening the the side door of the row unit. We wipe the inside of the door and clean the doffer sensor. We then clean under the doffers and wipe the moisture columns and anything else that needs to be wiped out. Then, we open the little door within the row unit, the rear drum or spindle rack, and wipe all the built up “gunk” out. Each one of these steps is done twice per row unit and six times per cotton picker because each machine has six row units. We wear gloves to keep our hands clean, but mostly to protect them from the paint chips. The paint will chip off, and the flakes are extremely sharp and will slice you like a knife. The gloves also protect your hands from the spindles. After hitting them a couple of times your knuckles will be bleeding because they are like razor blades. Cleaning the row units takes about 30-40 minutes per machine, depending on how many hands are helping.