Feature Story

2008 TPA Better Newspaper Contest

First Place D6

Hays Free Press

KING COTTON Family enjoys bumper crop on local land BY JEN BIUNDO Jimmy Jansen and his son J.P wear a look of satisfaction as they survey their fields. It's been a bumper year for cotton, and as far as the eye can see, dozens of white boils drip off every cotton plant like so many scoops of ice cream melting in the hot October sun. But the men don't permit themselves more than a moment's break. They are farmers, after all. It's harvest time, and there's work to be done. SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW If the land itself could remember, this year's harvest would be familiar. More than a century ago, cotton was king in Hays County. From the 1880s until the Great Depression, about 15 gins worked overtime to process the yields of the fertile black-land prairie. But by the early 1930s, flood, drought, predators and overproduction had worn out the fields. Area farmers were careless about crop rotation, depleting the land's nutrients. Hilly farms were planted without adequate terracing, and the floods of 1901 and 1913 washed away rich topsoil. In the 1920s, the devastating boll weevil completed its long migration from Mexico into Central Texas. A drought of record hit the area in 1925 -1926, and many area farms sunk into foreclosure. Some cotton farming persisted in the eastern portion of the county. But in Buda and the western hills, the economic base shifted from cotton to milk, with gins replaced by dairy farms and cheese factories. Jansen's cotton plants, standing tall and verdant in the Giberson family land off RM 967, represent the first cotton farming in the Buda area since the 1930s, says area old-timer Henry Armbruster. A FAMILY AFFAIR Jimmy Jansen was raised in Thrall, Texas and married Peggy Lehman, daughter of an established Kyle farming family. While living in Austin in the 1970s, they continued to farm Hays County land, and in 1986 they came home to Kyle. This spring, the Jansens planted cotton on close to 1,000 acres on several fields stretching from Buda to Lockhart, including the 150 acres in Buda. It's been a knockout growing season, yielding close to two bales an acre "This year was absolutely outstanding," J.P said. "2004 was very good. This year was phenomenal." After years of drought, the region received almost too much rain, boosting the crop. More importantly, the Jansens have carefully controlled their insect losses. J.P returned home a few years ago with a degree in agriculture from Texas Tech University and joined his father in the fields. Jansen senior brings decades of experience as a farmer. His son brings a new kind of scientific knowledge to the profession. "J.P explains to me why we do what we do," his father says cheerfully. After graduating from college, J.P considered following his brother's footsteps and becoming an attorney. He even went so far as to take the LSAT entrance exam, and earned a high enough score to get into the law school of his choice. But he thought it over and decided not to fill out the applications. "We weren't surprised," Jansen said. "Everyone knew J.P was going to be a farmer." The decision to pick farming over a potentially more lucrative career was easy for J.P. Still, the young man has trouble articulating exactly why he finds the uncertain profession so satisfying. "There's so much out of your control," J.P acknowledges. "You can do everything right and still lose a tremendous amount of money. A whole lot of luck goes into it." His father faced a similar decision. The farm has been making money, but to maintain a comfortable lifestyle for his family, Jansen also works as a CPA. In his heart, Jansen will always be a farmer first and a white collar professional second. "Putting numbers on a piece of paper; it doesn't seem like you're accomplishing much," Jansen said. "Plant 100 acres, you see something happening.” COTTON-PICKIN' DAYS The Jansens worked the seed into the land back in April and spent the summer protecting. the fields from weeds and insects as the seeds sprouted, shot out leaves and suddenly blossomed with flowers. Over the course of a single day, the flower blossoms darkened from a creamy yellow to a pinkish red color. Then the flowers withered and dropped, revealing the immature cotton boll inside. The cotton bolls grew and thickened until the end of the summer, when they began to pop open and reveal their payload-nearly half a million fibers of cotton in each. Much like timing a bag of popcorn in the microwave, the Jansens waited until enough bolls had popped open, then sprayed the plants with "defoliants," or chemicals that caused them to drop their leaves. Which brings them up to today. Now, father and son are ready for the actual harvest. They climb into cotton strippers, large tractors which suck in the brown stems and separate the cotton fibers from the plant. Just a few decades ago, it might take a man a week in the still-blistering October sun to pick a bale of cotton by hand. But in less than 10 minutes, driving along with the air conditioner blasting and the CD player rocking out, each stripper has harvested about two bales. Soon, the alarm is beeping a reminder to empty the yield into the "cotton buggy" which will carry the load to the edge of the field and pressed it into modules of 12 or more bales each. After a few days, semi trucks will carry the modules off for processing at the Lockhart gin, and the farmers can breathe a sigh of relief. Their harvest is complete. …