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Cotton farmer Stuart Briggeman looks over some of his crop near Pratt. Briggeman says cotton, which is becoming increasingly common in Kansas, is not easy to grow but that "it gives us an alternative crop that works, that generates a bottom line."

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Some of Stuart Briggeman's cotton has five-lock bolls, right, which produce more cotton than the more common four-lock bolls, left.

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Cotton farmer Stuart Briggerman, who farms 1,600 acres of cotton west of Cullison, talks to his young help about this year's harvest.

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Brian Chenoweth, 24, who works for Stuart Briggeman, works on a new $160,000 cotton stripper to prepare for the harvest of this year's crop.

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Stuart Briggerman walks past his strippers. The pieces of equipment cost an average of $160,000 each, which puts a bind on smaller farmers who might want to start framing cotton.

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Bill McManus, the manager of the new gin at Cullison, looks over a list of reminders as he and others work weekends trying to get the new gin up and running for the harvest.

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Workers put togather a new cotton gin, for High Plains Cotton Gin, near the town of Cullison just west of Pratt in early October.

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Tracks in the mud leading to a cotton seed storage building show some of the conditions the builders dealth with as the new gin was being built.

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The new cotton gin near Cullison's grain elevator looks to blend in, just like the cotton farming coming to the area.

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The signs indicate plots of different types of cotton being grown by Stuart Briggeman.