Gin Cranks Up For New Season

HAMILTON, Miss. (WCBI)- Farmer’s Gin in Hamilton caught fire almost a year ago and we followed up with them to see how they have recovered.

After the fire damage, and after the water damage, there’s the long-term damage.

Farmer’s Gin manager, Tommy Dahlem, says that’s more than a million dollars worth of seed.

This makes ginning cotton difficult, but not impossible.

“We had just lost all of our storage capacity,” said Dahlem. “So you know we were having to blow it into trailers and haul it as we ginned it.”

He also lost his entire seed house.

But Dahlem focuses on the future and growing the business with technology.

“To be honest with you we had a nice seed house,” said Dahlem. “But now we’ve got one that’s kind of a state of the art. It’s really nice and we’re real pleased with it so we kind of took that next step to be honest with you if any good I guess you could say if any good comes out of something like that, that was part of it.”

Another part is making sure the equipment details were up to par.

“We have bought a newer loader that’s going to have a different type of fan on it that keeps the lint blowed out better on the radiator and stuff like that,” said Dahlem.

The new seed house was completed earlier this month just in time for Dahlem to reap the benefits of higher cotton prices.

Farmers state wide are planting more cotton, and bringing in tons of barrels to his Hamilton factory.

The gin is running 24 hours a day, with a staff that is seven times larger than it is outside of harvest season.

“It’s going to be hectic for at least a couple more months,” said Dahlem. “I think we will be on into December before we get through harvest you know harvesting and ginning the crop.”