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Texas farmers come together to harvest cotton of neighbor fighting cancer

Posted at 8:33 AM, Nov 27, 2018
and last updated 2018-11-27 09:33:59-05

By Ana Orsini

LUBBOCK, TX (KCBD) - Farmers in Floyd County came together on Monday to harvest the cotton of a fellow farmer battling cancer.

Greg Bishop was diagnosed with Leukemia back in September. When local farmers learned he would not be able to complete his own harvest, they pooled together their own resources to harvest his crop this season.

Aaron Hendricks, the General Manager of Floydada Co-Op Gins said so many people wanted to help, they eventually had to start turning people away.

“We had a meeting about a week ago today and discussed it. We had about 35-40 farmers come in to talk to us and see what they could do. Some of it was done last week, but the majority of it was done today. We got a bunch of farmers together to go out and strip Greg Bishop’s cotton. We had 20 machines, all from different farmers, got together and harvested his cotton,” Hendricks said on Monday.

The idea to help Bishop with his harvest originally came from his friend, and fellow farmer, Robert Nixon.

Nixon says the amount of support they received from the community was overwhelming.

“We probably had anywhere from 300 to 400 acres and we started around 10 o’clock this morning and a little before 3 we were done. I mean we had that many people," Nixon said.

Millions of dollars worth of equipment were brought in to make the harvest possible. Various local companies even lent a helping hand by contributing service trucks, fuel, and food.

Dave Carthel, a longtime friend and former college roommate of Bishop’s, says he has never been a part of anything like this harvest before.

"We were all glad to do it for him. He’s got a rough road ahead and he’s got a lot more worries down the road than just getting his crop in so we were all just real glad to do it and I was glad to be a part of it,” Carthel said.

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