Photo: Brax - Valley Publishing

Photo: Brax - Valley Publishing

Photo: Brax - Valley Publishing

Photo: Brax - Valley Publishing

Photo: Brax - Valley Publishing

The peaceful sounds of early mornings bird songs... or slumber, during the summer are shattered by the sounds not of the Mocking Bird but by noises more akin to a war zone. The sound of course, is the sound of a small engine biplane performing arerial acrobatics... not for an appreciative audience but for the pests that are to be eradicated from a crop of cotton or alfalfa.

The small planes must carry large amounts of fuel and chemicals which it sprays upon crops... especially cotton when the stand is too high for conventional tractor application. This places a heavy burden upon the engine and thus it must be at full throttle much of the time.

Add to this the repetitive forward and return trips the plane must make in order to correctly apply the chemicals to a particular field and you have the making of a very noisy process.

Once the planes start in one direction the pilot must start preparing for the return trip in the opposite direction and thus the plane must make a severe bank in order to not travel too far away from the field it is spraying.

It is that banking manuever that causes the engine to strain and to be pushed to its limits thus making the engine sound louder than normal.

In the past, the crop dusters could spray without much worry about traffic or homes. That is not the case any more. With the increase in homes in the valley the crop dusters must now manuever away from public areas especially within the city limits of El Paso.

Artcraft has also become an obstacle as there are many 18-wheelers that travel upon this beltway and the crop dusters must gain elevation much more quickly to avoid collisions.

Because of the late summer and record temperatures the cotton has not been hit with anything approximating a freeze. This makes for a situation whereby the farmers need to have the cotton drop its leaves in order for the cotton picking machines to be able to harvest the cotton. In this case the crop dusters spray a defoliant upon the cotton to insure that regardless of the temperatures... the cotton will drop its leaves and leave bare the plant and its bolls.

Cotton is originally from the Andes regions of South America and there the cotton grows two crops a year and doesn't die annually due to the temperatures... new leaves start to leaf out after a slight dormantcy. And a new crop begins.

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Editor, Upper Valley Beacon

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