Part 1 Sugar Beets What We Did

We reported for work the last week end of Sept. 2010. While they were in a hurry to get us there by the week end they put off our orientation until Monday, as the weather had been to warm to harvest.

Starting several days later at the Powder River Piling station. Shown here is piler number one, the smaller piler at our station with only one lane.

Trucks lined up at the larger piler that could handle semis.

Eileen and I worked this piler.

The semis we unloaded came in two types the dump type shown here and one with a large plunger that went the full length of the trailer.

These and the many of the dump trucks unloaded on our right lane.

Here a truck is unloading on our left lane.

The yellow boom swings back and forth in an effort to keep the pile level left to right.

After some training I became the piler operator. This is the pusher rig and I had to signal the driver when to stop and start the the ram. To many beets in the hopper and they spill out. To slow and there are gaps going up the main raiser.

Eileen in front of the skid steer she had to use at the end of the day to clean up our area.

Our piler and work station for the month of October. The beets go in the hoppers on the left end of the picture and out the yellow boom on the right. The green booms on either side of the piler are for the tare.(the dirt shook of the beets and loaded back in the trucks.)

Our view up the Yellowstone River. If you click on the picture it will in large to full screen. You will then find a Bald Eagle siting in the dead tree at this end of the island.

One of the sun sets we were treated to.

At sun rise the moon is setting.

Part 2 Sugar Beets

Russ the piling supervisor for Sidney Sugar and us with piler in the background.

Our foreman Don ,back to us, and the maintenance man for 3 piling stations. When something goes wrong you hope you can fix it yourself, it could be a number of hours before help would arrive. Jeff one of the growers was a lot of help also.

The rest of the Powder River crew, except for Kay who took the picture. Next to Eileen is Nita and Dwain and next to me is the operator of the smaller piler.

About sugar beets , average size of beet is about the size of your head. Eileen found out that they hurt if they fall on your head.

Many of them longer than your foot.

The blue dot in the middle of the beet is the water soluble case the seeds are coated with. The seeds are encased to facilitate sewing of the seeds in a uniform manner. Sugar Beet seeds are grown in the Willamette Valley in Oregon.

This 17 inch sugar beet was one of the largest harvested last year.

These, ranging from 10 to 14 inches are very common.

From the cat walk on top of the piler looking over the nearly completed pile. Driving around the pile was 1/4 of a mile. Size of the pile is roughly the area of a football field 25 feet high.

This is the weigh station. Kay's work place. All trucks stop here twice being weighed in and out.

There is a tradition of those who find a red beet are to take it to the weigh station for a kiss, Kay made it quite clear she was not kissing any of us. So Eileen and I took some red beets, placed them on her desk and covered them with candy kisses at the near the end of the season. Kay then gave a kiss to all who passed her station the next day.

So in one month from a harvest of 986 acres requiring 1749 truck loads we piled about 31,000 tons of sugar beets at the Powder River piling station. Test were taken daily from all trucks and all growers to determine the sugar contented, over all the average sugar Continent for our station was 31.4%.