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This month's feature business:

SOS from Texas

Texas Prairie Rivers hopes to dress the region in ‘tall cotton’—the organic kind

            In the second phase of Texas Prairie Rivers Region’s push for merchandise to promote the area while supporting conservation, the organic cotton farming operation of Gary Oldham of Collingsworth County fits right into the package.

            “We grow it, gin it, spin it, knit it, and finish it,” he says, taking the cotton all the way from the field to the finished product, a T-shirt and other knit products from SOS from Texas.

            TPRR is a non-profit partnership dedicated to the conservation of bird and wildlife habitat in this region of rivers, wetlands, mesas, sand hills and native prairie extending from the northern Panhandle to the southwest plains. The group’s first promotion, bottled water offered regionally through Llanos Altos, Inc., a bottling company in Moore County, was announced in January. In this latest launch, area specialty and gift shops will make available TPRR T-shirts and other knit products by SOS from Texas, as well as provide gift bags made of organic cotton for bird seed.

            It was natural for Oldham to be in the cotton business. Living in the house that his grandfather built in the 1920s, Oldham has been on the farm southwest of Samnorwood for all of his life, except for his time at Texas A&M where he earned a master’s in aerospace engineering and when he worked in the industry—before family health problems brought him home sooner that he expected.

            When Oldham began raising organic cotton in 1992, not many people knew what it was. “ We grow it like they did a long time ago—before they had chemical fertilizers and pesticides.” It required about four ounces of concentrated chemicals to produce the eight ounces of cotton normally used in a T-shirt. Once he decided to go organic with his cotton, he received certification through the Texas Department of Agriculture which includes soil testing, leaf testing, and three years worth of monitoring crops. Oldham farms 400 acres and also raises wheat, peanuts, soybeans, and at times, alfalfa.

            Early on in his conversion to organic farming he realized that the people who wanted organic cotton were interested in a finished product. A woman from Sweden asked him to make a T-shirt. “I was kind of embarrassed,” he said, “I had been in the cotton business all my life and didn’t know the first thing about what you do with it after it left the gin.”

            So he learned all he could about the whole process and his first T-shirt was produced in 1993. After working over the years with several companies located in the southeastern United States and in Graham, Texas, his setup now involves ginning the cotton in Wellington, then on to Snyder to a textile mill for spinning the cotton into yarn. “One thing we’re committed to is putting our whole crop into one type of yarn,” he says. Different size yarns are used for woven goods such as jeans and towels; others are better for knits.

            The yarn is sent to a knitting mill in the southeast to be made into fabric, which is shipped back to Oldham where it is made into garments, providing jobs for local people. “Every size shirt we make is actually knitted that size,” he says, “no seams—they’re knitted in a circle in eight different size tubes.”

            The material’s color is a soft natural hue. “Every year’s cotton is different,” Oldham says, “kind of like wine.” He notes that there is really not a commercial dyeing process that is organic. A new line he introduced this year is sun-washed tees, pigment-dyed, with a washed-out look.

            A small market exists for organic cotton, he says, for people who are chemically sensitive, and he does sell a few retail through his website and at the plant. Most of the T-shirts and other products are sold wholesale, either through the website, www.sosfromtexas.com, or through gift store trade shows. Some of those customers want to have blank shirts for their own screen printing, but SOS from Texas also does custom printing, as he has for Texas Prairie Rivers. One T-shirt is a promotion for the Lesser Prairie Chicken viewing that takes place every spring in the Canadian area.

            Luke Lewis, TPRR Conservation Director, said the “For the Birds,” gift bags of bird seed will be available in about three weeks. They will contain a mix made in Gage, Oklahoma containing sunflower seed, wheat, sorghum, and millet.

            The TPRR shirts are available at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce office located at 216 S. 2nd, phone (806)323-5397.