On one of my several trips to West Texas, I was "blessed" to witness a fire in progress at a cotton gin in Punkin Center, Texas, northwest of Lamesa.

This was during a period of very high winds. A similar fire in Parmer County, Texas the month before caused some damage but failed to ignite the valuable cotton seed (used to make cottonseed oil or cattle feed, depending on something).

This one wasn't so lucky. In the larger picture below, the arm to the left of the burning shed is a large backhoe trying to put the fire out by burying the fire. He saved a small portion of the seed.

This is the A-frame style storage shed commonly used by cotton gins to store cotton seed. With a high oil content, these seed can burn spectacularly if the mass ignites.

A closeup of the east wall of the shed. I think the rough opening is an attempt to gain access to put the fire out.

The smoke was blowing across Texas 137. The visibility was near zero and did it ever stink!

A shot of the parking lot. Obviously the fire burned the grass in the area until it reached the road next to the gin. There was no sign of fire east of this dirt road.

On my next trip, in January, 2006, this is the remains of the storage shed.

With the remains of the cottonseed on this end of the frame.

More views of the aftermath. The water truck was there while the fire was going on. Maybe they didn't want to get it dirty but I suspect water isn't the best fire suppressant for cotton seed.

They were storing their cotton seed in the former parking lot. And I'm sure hoping for no rain, fire, or wind.

While this makes the gin look OOS, that didn't seem to be the case. This was taken in May, which would be between ginning campaigns.

These are the pictures after the 2006 campaign.. They obviously opted to keep running and store the seed on the north side instead of where the old shed was.

Maybe they didn't want the seed in the way if they started building sooner. Like most gins in Texas last year, they had a big yield; every cotton gin I passed literally had cottonseed running out the ends of the storage buildings.  I have no idea how the weather effects cotton seed but I'm sure they was trying to get these shipped somewhere!

The white blocks in the left hand picture are a pile of baled cotton after ginning. Most gins wrap stored bales like this in plastic these days; in the old days, they were wrapped in burlap and compressed so hard water didn't penetrate easily (which it still doesn't but no one takes a chance).