Hauling Sugar Beets

Yesterday the sugar beet harvest started.  It will run (weather permitting) until all the beets are harvested.  For many years now Harold has driven a beet truck in the field, and then to the beet piler with a load of sugar beets.   It is grueling work - he works from 2 a.m. to 2 p.m. every day with no breaks except the wait at the piler (if there is one).  He eats sandwiches on the run, and has even gotten pretty good at eating apple pie with one hand and steering the truck with one finger of the other hand!  Even though the work is hard and the hours are long, Harold enjoys this, and every year he is ready to go again - that is, IF he can always have his red Mack truck!  He works for a great farm family that treats the employees right, pays them well, and provides plenty of food and snacks.

The only bad thing about sugar beets is that our anniversary falls right in the middle of the beet harvest!  October 16.  We will be married 10 years this year.  I usually bake up some cinnamon rolls, and ride along with Harold for a good portion of the day, and that is how we have spent our anniversaries for the past 10 years!   Romantic, huh?  Riding a bumpy, dirty old truck eating cinnamon rolls and peering through a muddy windshield........

For those of you who have never seen a sugar beet, it looks sort of like a big turnip, and is sweet.  The American Crystal Sugar Co around here uses these beets to make bags of sugar.   It is quite a process!   Here are some photos from several years ago, as I don't have any from last year, and as sick as I am feeling with the flu lately, I may not even get to spend that "romantic ride on the beet truck" this year!   But it'll give you an idea about sugar beets.

This Harold's trusty old red truck. Harold's brother in law was riding along this day.  The truck is loaded with about 80,000 pounds of beets. Harold rides this truck right in the field, and the beets are lifted out of the ground with a special piece of machinery and piled into the truck via conveyor.   That truck ride in the field can be a bumpy, muddy ride, for sure!  Yee Haw!! They even drive in the rain, as long as the pulling trucks can still pull everyone out of the mud!

Harold has to back up the truck into the beet conveyor, which then shoots the beets into a big pile. This picture gives you no idea of how huge this piece of machinery is.    There are many beet pilers in the area and every one of them is full to capacity by the season's end. 

A big pile of beets started.  They pile the beets on cement, hundreds of feet wide, and about a 1/2 mile long.  It almost looks like piles of coal.   Sometimes there are several of these long piles of beets at the piler station.  These piles freeze down, and the Crystal Sugar Co uses them all winter long.  By March, the piles are usually gone. 

The sugar beet harvest is a whole other world that most folks don't see.  If I do get to ride with Harold this year, maybe I can take some better photos.