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Mrs. Otto Halter of the Rogers Ranch community near Lockhart in Caldwell County works in one of the flower beds included in her Yard Improvement Demonstration project. She was also a Kitchen and Improved Bedroom Demonstrator. The Halters raised cotton, corn, sorghum, hogs, sheep, and cattle on their 160-acre farm.
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Although mechanical cotton pickers were introduced earlier and were fairly common to parts of Texas shortly after World War II, not all cotton growers owned or used them. Some farmers continued to employ migrant workers to hand pick their cotton. Such employees were paid on the basis of the amount of cotton they picked. Good pickers strove for 300 pounds per day as they dragged their heavy sacks behind them through the long rows of cotton. That amount would equal approximately one-quarter of a bale of ginned cotton. Modern mechanical pickers can harvest between twenty and forty bales of cotton depending upon the type of machinery and the richness of the harvest. Here Elvira Rodriguez and Frances Martinez are picking cotton on the Henry Stringer farm in Runnels County.
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