Four Hole Swamp Archives

Cotton Tale: Century Industry, Century Farm, Century Family

Cotton Tale is an industry, farm, and family documentary headlining the changes in cotton production and agribusiness during the last 60 years. The narrative vehicle for this documentary is the voice of the "last-one-standing" patriarch of a four generation farm family living in the Four Hole Swamp of low-country South Carolina. Family members, multi-generational farm hands, and community testify to the family's farming heritage and deep-seated values of faith, succession, and family pride. Also prominent in the story is…

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June 10, 2015

Cotton Tale (In Progress) / Journal

A significant event and image from my life …

My mother was the only patient in the ICU of Haywood County Regional Medical Center on Wednesday evening, May 9, 2012. The Unit was eerily quiet, absent of the usual beeping cadence of monitors, and that of my mother's - her monitor and I.V.'s disconnected a few hours before. The sole light burning was the one over the nurses station which cast a diffuse fluorescent glow through their observation window into her private room. My mother's life was slipping away as her still warm…

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June 3, 2014

Journal

Rubber for Cotton

Josh Riley of Cameron, S.C. manages a repair service for farm equipment. Now is the height of the cotton picking season in the Four Hole Swamp area of Low Country S.C. Image from the Cotton Tale: A Century Family, Farm, and Industry.

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November 19, 2013