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Continuous rainfall prevents many growers from harvesting 2018 crop.

Shelley E. Huguley, Editor

April 11, 2019

13 Slides

Last September it began to rain in the Texas Brazos Valley Bottom as growers completed defoliation of their cotton and prepared for what they hoped would be a bountiful harvest. But the rain didn't let up long enough for many growers to complete their harvest, leaving rows and for some, fields of unharvestable cotton. Today, growers Jay Wilder and John Giesenschlag and their sons are shredding that unharvestable cotton and hoping for dry weather so they can begin the 2019 season. To read more about their situation, see Continuous rainfall leaves 2018 cotton in fields, delays planting.

About the Author(s)

Shelley E. Huguley

Editor, Southwest Farm Press

Shelley Huguley has been involved in agriculture for the last 25 years. She began her career in agricultural communications at the Texas Forest Service West Texas Nursery in Lubbock, where she developed and produced the Windbreak Quarterly, a newspaper about windbreak trees and their benefit to wildlife, production agriculture and livestock operations. While with the Forest Service she also served as an information officer and team leader on fires during the 1998 fire season and later produced the Firebrands newsletter that was distributed quarterly throughout Texas to Volunteer Fire Departments. Her most personal involvement in agriculture also came in 1998, when she married the love of her life and cotton farmer Preston Huguley of Olton, Texas. As a farmwife, she knows first-hand the ups and downs of farming, the endless decisions made each season based on “if” it rains, “if” the drought continues, “if” the market holds. She is the bookkeeper for their family farming operation and cherishes moments on the farm such as taking harvest meals to the field or starting a sprinkler in the summer with the whole family lending a hand. Shelley has also freelanced for agricultural companies such as Olton CO-OP Gin, producing the newsletter Cotton Connections while also designing marketing materials to promote the gin. She has published articles in agricultural publications such as Southwest Farm Press while also volunteering her marketing and writing skills to non-profit organizations such as Refuge Services, an equine-assisted therapy group in Lubbock. She and her husband reside in Olton with their three children Breely, Brennon and HalleeKate.

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