Sugar Beet Wrap-Up

I suspect all you readers are sick of hearing about Sugar Beets.  But this has been such a huge, long desired event in JIm’s life, we feel the need to add a few more things.

Jim read my last blog post and said “You didn’t tell them about the dirt plow!”  He’s right, I didn’t.  About mid-harvest Jim called me and said “I’ve seen everything now.  There is a snow plow out here plowing DIRT off the roads!”  Unfortunately, he didn’t have a camera handy.  So you will have to imagine a snow plow scraping the slick dirt off the highways that is deposited by all the truck traffic.

Jim’s great-nephew, Avery, saw the pictures of the equipment on the field in our last post.  The result was Avery building his own sugar beet harvesting equipment from Legos!!!  Seeing these pictures was the highlight of my day.  Thanks Andrea for sharing!

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Avery built a Sugar Beet lifter and a truck to receive the beets!!!

Avery and his little sister Fay harvesting Sugar Beets!

Avery and his little sister Faye harvesting Sugar Beets!

I just discovered Sproule Farms has a YouTube video from this year’s harvest that will show better than I ever can of what happens at the field. I imagine Jim is in one of those trucks you see. Here it is. https://youtu.be/V-I5xwVd6dA

I did get to ride with Jim the final morning of the beet harvest.  I, too, shot some video, although nothing as nice as what Sproule Farms did.  But it will show what happens at the piler once we get pulled off the field.  The video is at https://youtu.be/XRUdktDTxRI

So the Sugar Beet Harvest for Sproule Farms ended on Sunday.  There are still plenty of beet trucks still on the road heading to the pilers.  But a lot of the temporary workers have been released and the campground is starting to thin out.

Jim has been working yesterday and today getting the trucks ready for the corn harvest.  However, he called today and told me he doubts if he’ll get out into the field again since someone “planted” the combine  The combine was being used for the last of the soybean harvest and is needed for corn after the soybeans were done.  Planted????  I think that means stuck. Jim was not there, but said they tried to get the combine out with a tractor with no luck.  Then they tried a bulldozer.  Again, no luck.  So they were loading up an excavator to take over and dig it out.   Well, I see why when I looked at the Sproule Farms Facebook page this afternoon.  I “borrowed” their photos and they are below.  I have no idea if they got the combine out yet.

"Hmmm, I wonder how we get this out."

“Hmmm, I wonder how we get this combine out.”

A combine, VERY much stuck in the mud.

A combine, VERY much stuck in the mud.

Bring on the excavator!

Bring on the excavator!

Our time in the Grand Forks area is winding down. I spent the day going through our pile of mail that was forward to us yesterday (Thanks Mary Ellen!) and geocaching.

Geocaching along the Red River.

Geocaching along the Red River. Someone get me some selfie lessons please!!!

We are having a final campfire tonight with our new friends. It will be fun to hear about everyone’s experiences. Then we will all scatter to our next destinations across the country. We depart on Thursday, leaving with fond memories of these three weeks.

One thought on “Sugar Beet Wrap-Up

  1. dominiquefeather

    That’s some mud that they have out there!!! Glad that Jim was able to have the beet experience but sorry that he is missing out on the corn. Safe travels.

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