Even after technology had provided a better and faster way of performing tasks around the farm, many farmers used pre-technology methods such as this two cow plow. Census data for 1915 reported that there were 56,000 farms in Texas. That number had dwindled to 2,092 by 1954.
These two men are standing in the middle of an expansive crop of spinach on what is now the site of the City Coliseum, between Barton Springs Road and Riverside Drive.
This employee of the Heep Dairy is so focused on his work, bottling the product in a public viewing room, that he seems totally unaware of being photographed. A 1936 ad in the Austin American-Statesman informed customers that "employees are subjected weekly to exacting physical examinations to insure their being free from communicative disease."
Driving the fully loaded wagons to the gin was just a small portion of the work that went into raising and processing cotton. At the gin the cotton would be cleaned of debris and seeds and then baled for shipment.
