First we went into a small room of the house where a woman was teaching children to de-seed the cotton balls. The fuzz was placed in the basket and the seeds were placed in the gourd for next year's planting. This was not easy work. It only took about 30 seconds to see why Eli's machine took off.
Once Isabella and Anton had removed the seeds and enough fuzz was collected, they had to card it to make long strings. These strings were then fed to the large spinning wheel. Apparently the smaller one moves too fast for the shorter strings of cotton. The smaller one was used for the wool from the sheep.
Later in the day, while investigating the gardens, Isabella decided to pick some cotton. Anton also picked some, since I have managed to train them in helping pick produce from my two years of gardening. They were so excited to carry their carmel colored fuzz back to the cotton house. They told all the employees they saw why they were carrying handfuls of the fuzz. I think they too were surprised to see the children so excited to pick cotton for them. It was like they just dicovered a huge secret, cotton is a plant.
