Fields of Cotton

After Socorro I stayed one night at Elephant Butte, mostly because I didn't feel like driving a lot on that day. They didn't really want people with small set up like mine. Their sign did say "no rig is too big", but apparently some "rigs" are too small. They let me stay one day but no more.
Anyway, the next day I drove off thinking that I would stop at Truth or Consequences, mostly because I like the name and because it has some hotsprings but somehow driving through I didn't feel like stopping. I jut looked decrepit or something. The entire area along the road looked like the bad-neighborood. Maybe there is more to it if you get off the main street but I don't know.
Either way I stayed off the interstate and drove parallel to it on a small road following the Rio Grande. this is where I saw some cotton fields.
Already harvested, but still neat. The white stuff on the ground is not snow, it is cotton.

Even though the fields were already harvested the end of the rows still had quite a bit of cotton on the plants.

Further along the road I saw on a side little road somebody in the process of harvesting the cotton.

Here is the field before it is harvested:

It is actually a fairly small "harvester". Form what I could see he could only do a row or maybe two at a time. i do not know if they are all like this because it is the only one I saw.

I should say, cotton on the plant is as soft as what you buy but inside the lump of cotton you can feel seeds all caught up in the fiber, one perlump. The seeds are about the third to a half of a coffee bean in size.