Travel Blog

Two down. Hopefully only eight to go!

So this is the post for all the folks interested in what working the sugar beet harvest entails.
Let’s start off with a picture of a sugar beet. You can see that they are a decent size. I picked a pretty big one for
example purposes, but I’ve seen (and shoveled) bigger ones.


I’m what they call a “sample taker.” Phil is a “helper.” The difference in our job descriptions is that Phil can run the
piler when our piler operator needs a break, and I can’t. But let me start at the beginning.
The beets come from the field to us in big trucks. The trucks bring them to a piler, which basically does what it
says. They dump the beets from their truck beds into a contraption (we’ll call it the hopper) that funnels the beets
onto a conveyer belt and up a big crane-thing (we’ll call it the boom) and shoots them out the top onto big beet
piles. The boom is moved from side to side to fill in the beets and keep the pile nice and even. When a pile gets
high enough, the pile operator moves the whole contraption back a foot or so and keeps shooting.

This is a piler. This image was borrowed from Google images since we’re not supposed to take pictures at the
site.


We stand at the bottom near where the beets go up the big arm thing and direct trucks through to where they need
to dump their beets. (They really don’t need much direction; many of them have been doing this forever.) Two
trucks can come at the same time, one of either side of the machine. Phil and I are on one side and a nice couple,
Bertha and Martin, are on the other side. When the trucks are in place, the drivers hand us a slip of paper on
which we write the piler number. This slip will also tell us if we’re supposed to take a sample or not. If so, they give
me a little bar code dealie, and I take that over to the sample taker spout. We have canvass bags to catch the
sample of beets that come flying down a chute when we push a button. If we don’t have to take a sample, we busy
ourselves by keeping the work area clean of debris (dirt and beets). And sometimes the trucks get too excited and
dump beets all over the place (this happens if they drop their load too quickly and the beets spill out of the
dumper), so when this happens, it’s our job to go shovel all those beets back into the hopper. We have to do this
quickly so the next truck can come through in a timely manner. That can be a bear of a job because you’ve seen
the size of these things. (So Jerry, if you’re reading this, we are indeed shoveling beets!) When the truck is down
dumping the beets, we direct them forward a bit to receive their dirt. As the machine conveys their beets up the
belt, the dirt and crap get agitated off and the trucks have to take that dirt back to the farm with them. If they’re
small trucks, they back up to get their dirt. If they’re big trucks, they just pull forward, get their dirt, then back up
and turn around. We have to watch that they don’t hit any machinery (or us) and that they are in the right position
to get their dirt. If we misjudge that, the dirt falls on the ground and we have to clean that up too. Even if we don’t
misjudge, dirt still falls on the ground, and we still have to clean it up. We also have to clean out the hopper every
now and again because mud accumulates on the walls and that has to be scraped off.

Like I said before, when our piler operator, Jorge, goes on a break or needs to do something on the ground, Phil
will go up into the controller booth and run the show. It’s a pretty intense responsibility. You have to direct two
trucks at once and make sure their loads are getting dumped at the right pace, and at the same time you have to
watch where the boom is because if you leave it in one place too long and it gets covered in beets, the whole arm
can fall down and a million-dollar machine is broken. So you have to juggle a lot of things.

And that process goes twenty-four hours a day. I’ll leave the critique until we’re done, but there are pros and cons
to this job. I don’t know yet if I’d do it again, but it doesn’t suck as much as it sounds on paper. It is a physical
job, and you’re standing for twelve hours. And if you’re working overnights, it gets mighty cold around four in the
morning (it was freezing last night - literally). But it’s not brain surgery and you get a rhythm. And Phil and I are
together, except for when he’s working the machine. So far, so good. More to come later, but before I sign off,
check out the farmer: