Local cotton farmers have been busy of late harvesting yet another bumper crop this season. Herman Rochester and sons have been working from the wee hours of the morning to well into the even hours on their 4,000 plus acres in the Pollard’s Bend area of Cherokee County.

The Rochesters also rent land from Harry Foster for cotton planting.

“They have had a real good crop,” said Foster. “I got up in the middle of the night the other night, looked out the window and it reminded me of snow.

“Everything was so white out there.”

Foster noted how cotton farming has changed dramatically over the years.

“Going from a pick sack to what they’ve got now is unreal,” said Foster.

Seth Rochester said his family has farmed in the area for more than 30 years. Rochester returned to the farm after working several years as a deputy for the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office. He said he couldn’t be happier!

“I have been around farming all of my life, but this is my first year back in it full-time,” said Rochester. “I heard my older brother Shannon make the comment earlier today that this is one of the best cotton crops he has ever harvested. We just thank the Good Lord for that.”

“Everything is going well and I have talked to some of the other local farmers and everybody is having a good cotton crop,” said Rochester.

“We hit a patch there, but it seems to have worked out fine,” he noted. “We had a dry spell earlier in the summer. When we first got everything planted, then we hit a real rainy spell. It was almost too much rain, we had some to start rotting. It shut off raining just in time, everything matured out and so far, like I said, the cotton so far is good.”

Rochester said they worked a total of some 4,700 acres of cotton this season.

“We had 180 acres of soybeans and my dad just finished picking them today,” said Rochester. “They turned out really well and then we probably had 500 or 600 acres of corn that we had. It turned out fair but corn took a hurting from the dry spell. It could have been better but we are thankful for what we got.”

One concern Rochester and other cotton farmers have are the prices, noting that they are currently around 70 to 72 cents per pound.

“That is one thing that is really hurting us and one thing that has really got us scared is they’ve got it projected next year to go down to 50 cents a pound,” said Rochester. “Last year we were getting around $1 a pound and next year they are saying 50 cents.”

Rochester said their day begins around 7 a.m.

“If it is a windy day, we work sometimes until 9, 10 11 o’clock if not longer trying to get it out,” said Rochester. “On average, we work 12 or 13-hour days.”

“I haven’t had an off day in about a month,” said Rochester. “If it rains, we have a full day of equipment servicing to do.”

But still, Rochester, his brothers, Chad and Shannon and his father, Herman, are grateful for their crops and their farm.

“We thank the Good Lord that He has blessed us with one and me and my dad and my brothers work as a team on this, put in a lot of work on it and we thank the Good Lord for us and all of the other farmers in Cherokee County,” said Rochester. “He has blessed us with a good crop.”