Several hundred acres provided a living for the Carter family and other families who lived here. Like neighbors throughout southwest Georgia, Earl Carter planted a mix of cotton, corn, watermelons, sugar cane, sweet potatoes, and peanuts, hoping for good prices when the harvest was hauled to the railroad or cotton gin. Sugar cane grown here was crushed and boiled down for syrup, and Mr. Earl sold his "Plains Maid" syrup in local grocery stores as well as his own commissary. Young boys like Jimmy Carter hated "mopping cotton," a task meant to kill boll weevils by mixing arsenic with molasses and water and then daubing the sticky poison onto cotton buds with buckets and a rag mop. Jimmy Carter later recalled that it was considered a job for boys rather than men, and that after a few hours in the fields their trousers, legs, and bare feet were saturated with the syrupy mess.