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Mike Milteer was operating this cotton picker as a teenager while helping his father, J. Thomas Milteer Jr., custom-pick cotton in the Holland area of Suffolk in the late 1960s. Here, Mike is harvesting the crop using an Allis-Chalmers non-cab cotton harvester.

Years later, he was one of the first farmers who grew cotton in 1989 as the crop was making a comeback in Virginia. Today’s cotton pickers are much different from those in the ’60s.

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