Or even small cattle, he says: “Small enough to not damage the crop.”.

So he’s turning to sheep as an alternative. [9] Regional Mexican musician Ramon Ayala also covered the Spanish version of "Cottonfields" in 1989, and it became a well-known hit for years. The Springfields included "Cotton Fields" on a 1962 EP release: this version is featured on the CD On an Island of Dreams: The Best of the Springfields.

They crack and allow water to pass through easily,” he explains. So we turned our lens of carbon farming to crop production, and sought to explore the work of four key cotton farmers across Northern and Central California. Very educational in terms of understanding and being exposed to a range of resilience/regenerative practices and viewpoints. For the past year, and throughout a planting cycle, Fibershed has been visiting cotton growers throughout Northern and Central California in an effort to understand the system as it is. 13 hit in 1961 for The Highwaymen, "Cotton Fields" served as an album track for a number of C&W and folk-rock acts including Ferlin Husky (The Heart and Soul of Ferlin Husky 1963), Buck Owens (On the Bandstand 1963), the New Christy Minstrels (Chim-Chim-Cheree 1965) and the Seekers (Roving With The Seekers 1964): Odetta also made a new studio recording of the song for her 1963 album One Grain of Sand. What’s needed now is more support, from soil to skin, in enhancing soil health and regional supply chains. California Cotton Fields: Nathanael Siemens on a 10 Acre Model Toward Regeneration. [Part 2]", The Go Set Chart Book, Australia’s First National Charts, http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,9653.0.html, http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php?PHPSESSID=0a018874ead15d2c39b64529a6286378&topic=25681.msg626620#msg626620, https://www.discogs.com/Elton-John-Cotton-Fields-16-Legendary-Covers-From-196970/release/11714438, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aLXN9teNVQ, Loop de Loop (Flip Flop Flyin' in an Aeroplane), Good Timin': Live at Knebworth England 1980, Good Vibrations: Thirty Years of The Beach Boys, Beach Boys' Party!

As a result, the cotton from Johnson’s plot was 6 feet high, producing 5 bales of cotton per acre, completely free of fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides.

COTTON FARMS.

Bowles Farming Company, which is now being operated by the sixth generation of the Bowles family, has taken a similar approach. Looking to shop online? But that doesn’t align with his values or methods as he strives for a regenerative system. I haven’t thrown out the possibility. “Buying land out here is out of the question.”, Last year, inspired by a soil health training featuring regenerative farmer. So my neighbor’s field doesn’t have a single weed in it, which is a very different situation from how we farmed cotton years ago.”. Looking to build a regenerative farm, Siemens is undergoing an experiment on a ten-acre plot that will have valuable lessons for all cotton growers. Recorded by Lead Belly in 1940, "Cotton Fields" was introduced into the canon of folk music via its inclusion on the 1954 album release Odetta & Larry which comprised performances by Odetta at the Tin Angel nightclub in San Francisco with instrumental and vocal accompaniment by Lawrence Mohr: this version was entitled "Old Cotton Fields at Home". "Cotton Fields (The Cotton Song)" is a song written by American blues musician Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, who made the first recording of the song in 1940. They helpfully munch on the cover crops he has seeded, depositing their fertile (and microbe-rich) manure onto the field in return. Lastly, forty-four year old Nathanael Siemens can be seen as a beacon of the future of cotton farming—here in the San Joaquin Valley and beyond. But that’s the beginning of his journey towards regenerative cotton farming. Cotton as a crop is not problematic. Ultimately she hopes this effort will help increase yields of the cash crops, alfalfa and cotton, and increase the water-holding capacity of all 70 acres of project land. Last year, inspired by a soil health training featuring regenerative farmer Gabe Brown, he decided to take on cotton. Using Dr. David Johnson’s BEAM work, he is making a fungal dominated compost for his farm, and working in collaboration with the Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems at Chico State, the National Center for Appropriate Technology, UC Cooperative Extension office in Bakersfield, and Fibershed. Later versions (e.g., Creedence Clearwater Revival's) say the fields are "down in Louisiana, just about a mile from Texarkana".

Resilience is a program of Post Carbon Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping the world transition away from fossil fuels and build sustainable, resilient communities. These leaves will break down with frost, but in the San Joaquin Valley where Siemens is working, that frost-induced senescence, he says, is not an option. [8] In Spanish, the song was covered by the '60s rock and roll group Los Apson titled "Cuando Yo Era Un Jovencito" (When I Was A Young Boy). Only a year into his journey on building a regenerative ecosystem for cotton, Siemens has had his setbacks. John Teixeira, who was growing organic cotton back in the 1980s, has long understood the values of farming in tandem with nature; this has led him to convert his ranch into a biodynamic operation, thinking even more deeply about how the ecosystem can support itself without any external inputs. “I’m giving it a 50-50 chance. The second option, often practiced by conventional farmers, is to add a chemical or salt. So far, the model is moving ahead thanks to this mix of integrating methods, technologies, and partners: Siemens is part of a collaborative effort to evaluate the economic and ecologic impact of regenerative practices in cotton systems, which includes the Center for Regenerative Agriculture and Resilient Systems at Chico State, the National Center for Appropriate Technology, UC Cooperative Extension in Kern County, and Fibershed. “For me, regenerative means that growing that crop improves everything it touches on the farm,” he says. This translated to more carbon sequestration: an estimated 38,000 pounds of CO2 per acre per year.

He spends his mornings just walking the fields, trying to figure out what to do next, how to overcome the challenges that he faces daily from weed control to irrigation to simply getting a hold of enough seeds. That spike in soil carbon increase was even higher than in the no-till soils he tested.