{"id":4507,"date":"2014-10-16T19:55:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-16T23:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.2dogsbarkin.com\/blog\/?p=4507"},"modified":"2023-07-02T19:57:04","modified_gmt":"2023-07-02T23:57:04","slug":"sugar-beets-and-more-sugar-beets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.2dogsbarkin.com\/blog\/archives\/4507","title":{"rendered":"Sugar Beets and More Sugar Beets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sugar beets have been harvested!!! This is the fastest season the agriculturist can remember. 24 hours a day for sixteen back to back days start to finish.<\/p>\n

So how does this all work. At the grower\u2019s field diggers (machines not people) pull the beets out of the ground and put them on trucks.<\/p>\n

The trucks come to the piling ground where they are unloaded. Later, other trucks show up and take the beets away to the processing factory.<\/p>\n

This is our pile of beets.<\/p>\n

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and our piler which we named Gomer.<\/p>\n

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The trucks drive across these gates. (when we have them open)<\/p>\n

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The gate is closed and the truck is backed into position.<\/p>\n

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The back of the truck is raised by the driver or by a remote control we can use, and the conveyor belt is started, moving the beets off of the truck.<\/p>\n

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Here I am unloading one of the trucks. The hard part is controlling the off load of the beets so that you don\u2019t make a mess and have beets flying everywhere.<\/p>\n

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The beets travel up a conveyor and through what are basically beater-bars that remove most of the dirt.<\/p>\n

After the truck is unloaded the driver pulls ahead and is given the dirt that was removed from the beats. (it comes out that long green arm extending over the truck.)<\/p>\n

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I thought the light and motor for the dirt conveyor belt looked like an invisible man sitting up there on the arm. Blue jeans, hat, chair and his fishing pole\u2026.do you see it? Ok maybe it was the late nights\u2026.<\/p>\n

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So, after the truck leaves the clean-up happens. The trucks are muddy from being in the field, and sometimes there is spillage of beets that need to be picked up. Smashed beets mixed with dirt and mud make for a slippery hard packed goo that needs to be scrapped off so the trucks don\u2019t slip and the machine doesn\u2019t stick.<\/p>\n

We all chipped in with clean-up, at times it was the only way to stay warm. We shoveled, raked and scraped.<\/p>\n

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John, me and Mike were operators of the machine and Mike\u2019s wife Mo was our permanent ground crew worker. (she gets vertigo with heights and didn\u2019t want to climb the ladder to the operating position).<\/p>\n

Mo was in charge of building the pile, bagging samples and communicating with the drivers and the operators. Isn\u2019t our beet pile beautiful? We were quite proud of how good our pile looked.<\/p>\n

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Part of our cleaning duties included crawling inside certain portions of the machine to dig out dirt and then moving the 100 foot machine back about 1\/2 a football field so all of the debris could be cleaned out from under Gomer.<\/p>\n

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What does a sugar beet look like? Like this.<\/p>\n

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What does an 18 pound sugar beet look like? Here is this years biggest beet.<\/p>\n

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Beet temperature has to be between 28 and 40 degrees. Outside the threshold, the harvest is halted. So how do you take a beet\u2019s temperature? Cut it in half and use a touchless thermometer of course.<\/p>\n

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You might be wondering what sugar beets are used for. Mostly the sugar juice that is extracted from the beet is used in candy. The pulp is used in the making of some cereals, as well as for making wine and vodka.<\/p>\n

There are other food uses, like coleslaw I guess. We tried one and found it to be super sweet at first but the more we chewed it the more bitter it became.<\/p>\n

Stats for our friend Paul, our number man:<\/p>\n