South Plains farmers used the help of the supermoon to add extra light while they finish the final stages of harvest before temperatures drop for winter.
“Some people call it the harvest moon or the blood moon,” Cotton Farmer Lloyd Arthur said. “Just that once in a lifetime opportunity now that we’re in harvest mode. You kind of connect the harvest with the moon.”
Most farmers told EverythingLubbock.com that they usually harvest in the late hours of the night, and the Supermoon was another opportunity to grab a little extra light.
“This is what we do,” Arthur said. “When you got to go, you got to go. You take care of every opportunity that you can because there’s going to be break downs in front of you. There’s going to be weather delays. There’s other delays that you have. Nothing good can happen to this crop at the stage that it’s in right now. So we got to get it harvested.”
Arthur said a benefit to harvesting at night is the darkness. He added it serves as blinders so he’s not easily distracted on the tractor. Arthur also said the wind and humidity is usually down at night. So there is less debris in the field, and it becomes dryer, thus, making it easier to collect.
“If the humidity is high and it comes up earlier in the evening, you have to shut it down (operations) and that makes for a slower day, slower harvest,” Arthur said. “So we try to take advantage of those nights and go through because the next rain could be around the corner and we need to get it harvested and ginned.”
Arthur said because West Texas weather can be so unpredictable, farmers have to take advantage of every day or night with clear weather.
If the weather continues as expected, Arthur said they will be able to finish harvest by mid-December.
