Travel Blog

Four nights down, and we were getting into the vampire groove of sleeping days and being up nights. But on

Sunday, it started to rain. We still went in at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, and there were still big old trucks coming in,
but not that many. One piler could handle it (we have two pilers on our site), which was good because our piler
was experiencing difficulties. So Phil and I, and the other couple we work with, sat in our respective trucks for
awhile, watching the rain fall more heavily and the trucks come less frequently. While we were waiting, the other
couple, Berta and Martin, gave us some Mexican candy. One was called Vero Mango, described on the package
as “mango flavored hard candy lollipop coated with chilli. Then there was the Bomba Chile, a chilli strawberry
flavored lollipop (Berta told me to watch for the powdered center). And then there was the one I ate that night that
was described as caramel and tamarind, but all I could taste was the chilli. Very interesting.


Then our foreman said it was time to get some work done. Huh? What? No trucks were coming, and we were told
the problem with the piler was electrical. What could we do? Turns out the piler problem was not electrical. The
problem was that there was too much dirt underneath the tracks of the thing, which is ok when the dirt is dry
because the piler can just push it all out of the way. However, when the dirt gets wet and turns to mud, ah, not so
much. So we spent a couple of hours, in the pouring rain mind you, digging out mud and beets so the piler could
move again. This was good and bad. See, Sunday we get paid double time, so we actually wanted to work. But
after about four hours, when the rain was starting to pour into the TOPS of my boots, I wasn’t caring so much
about the money. I just wanted to go home and de-prune. And we’ve been home ever since due to rain because
the farms can’t harvest when it’s raining too hard. The fields become too much of a mud pit and the trucks get
stuck. Supposedly we go back to work Wednesday night, and it will be like starting all over again since we’ve been
off our schedule. We tried to stick with it, but we just couldn’t do it.

And for the record, the AccuWeather forecast was right on for all this rain we’ve been having here. Phil’s been
impressed.
Mudpit by our RV:


Mudpit in our truck:


Dave Novak (who works at AccuWeather, for those of you who don’t know) left a comment last post asking what
we do with the beets now that they’re out of the ground. Good question. They’re going to sit in those big piles and
freeze. That’s the goal. They’ll stay there frozen until next year sometime when they’re ready to be taken to the
American Crystal Sugar Company and processed into sugar. I can’t remember if I’ve ever seen bags of it in the
East, but I was at the grocery store here last night and saw them (and kicked a couple and burst into tears, if you
must know…nah, just kidding). It sounds like a lot of this sugar is also used by big companies like Hershey’s and
Coca-Cola for their products. That’s what we’ve been told anyway.

And Jerry Harlin, my good friend and coworker from Corrington’s, you’ll never guess what I’ve been told twice now
by my foreman. I’ve been told that I “work too hard.” I know you can’t believe it, but it’s true. Ha ha. But I really
don’t, which Jerry can attest to. It’s just like with the Christmas trees when the guys there couldn’t believe I could
toss and tote the trees around. The guys here can’t believe I can toss bags of beets around without hurting myself.
One look of my linebacker shoulders should clue them in, but what can I say. I can play the delicate flower card as
good as anybody. And Phil can do all the work.