Once the work on the drip-irrigated experimental field was finished, the cooperative's cotton harvest was nearing its end too.
The cooperative finished harvesting nearly half a month later than the experimental field, mainly because the replanted cotton flowered at different times. Even after the third picking, they stripped off several hundred sacks of unopened bolls to take home and shell.
Those unopened bolls brought no money. Each household took a few dozen sacks home to shell at leisure over the winter. There would still be buyers for the cotton the following spring.
Of course, they could also keep it for themselves. They could take the unopened cotton to a cotton mattress filling shop to have the seeds removed, then use it to pad coats, make cotton shoes, and so on.
The Team's other two cooperatives were in the same situation. Without drip irrigation, watering and fertilizing could only be managed in a rough-and-ready fashion. Li Long's cooperative did relatively better because they had experience.
It was the other two cooperatives' first attempt at centralized planting on such a large scale, and they lacked experience. Although they frequently consulted Xie Yundong and the others, some techniques had to be applied at the right time. They might also have added ideas of their own while carrying them out, reducing their effectiveness.
In the end, those two cooperatives finished even later than Li Long's.
By the time the stalks were chopped and the fields plowed, frost already covered the open ground morning and evening. Clearly, snow would not be far off.
It was late October.
At this time of year, the Northern Xinjiang countryside looked bleak. All the crops had been harvested, and after the stalks were chopped, the fields had been plowed, turning up yellow, gray, or brown earth.
Apart from a