Sacred Tools & Sugar Dreams
Passing Down More Than Land
Beet Beat
It took about four audiobooks, ten days, and twenty frozen burritos to get me through the 2023 American Crystal Sugar Beet Harvest.
We made it through without denting any iron, nor did anybody get hurt; always something worth celebrating.
Beet harvest gets long, even for folks who love this farming gig as much as I do. It takes a special breed to drive in circles, repeating patterns for almost a fortnight.
Good help is good to find, especially in this gig. Fortunately, we’re blessed with enough support to move the crop from field to bin or, in the case of sugar beets, field to pile.
Some folks aren’t so lucky.
On a year of bizarre accidents across the valley, we escaped with the most significant blunder: when I tangled with a rare 2023 mud hole and buried my rig.
Not to worry, a quick tug, and I was back at it.
The Torch
I’ve always found it interesting that every farmer does things differently.
Seeing all the different ways to accomplish the same goal is fun.
I’ve seen guys who don’t believe in using soap to wash farm equipment. Some refuse to oil their roller chains because it’s too messy. I’ve heard of others who fire drivers who don’t immediately answer a call on the CB radio.
As an old coworker often said, it takes all kinds, and many of them are higher than giraffe nipples.
Years ago, I hauled beets for a fellow who didn’t leave box scrapers in the trucks. Most farmers place one in each truck because our muddy red river dirt clings and needs an occasional scrape.
For those who have never farmed sugar beets, a bit of background.
Here’s the skivvy if you hear me talking about dumping dirt:
A load of sugar beets dumped at the factory or outside piling station runs through a piling machine. The beets run up a conveyor, passing through a cleaning hopper where excess dirt is separated from the sugar beets.
From there, the beets ride another conveyor to the stockpile.
After dumping, the trucks back under the dirt boom to reload that excess dirt. The driver heads back to the field, dumping said dirt before repeating the cycle another couple hundred times.
Instead of a scraper for everybody, this guy only had one. A lone scraper, no more robust than a wet toothpick that he would javelin huck into the first dirt pile.
The community box scraper always signified the start of the sugar beet campaign.
Like the Olympic torch, the scraper followed us from field to field until all the beets were dug and the equipment put away.
This year, we brought back the torch.
It watched over us and protected us from breakdowns, mishaps, and misfortunes.
When the days got long, and it seemed we’d never finish, the mighty box scraper gave us strength.
It kept us safe.
She got us through.
Twenty years later, I now understand that the farmer who initiated this ritual wasn’t just trying to save a buck. He was creating a way, a torch that would live through the generations of beet farms across America.
What a visionary.
Yesterday, the torch of 2023 was officially extinguished when the text message told us the last beets at our station had been lifted.
The war is over, but the spirit of the torch remains, burning bright in the corner of the shop until we do this again next year.
Speaking of the Torch…Pass it On
Nineteen years ago, I worked my life's worst sugar beet shift.
Still young and dumb, hankering to impress my old man, I thought I could do it all.
Dad’s reputation for not resting until the job is done is unmatched. Bonus points if it’s done quickly.
Seriously, in the nineties, when Pops drove semi for a local trucker, the bossman used to report to my uncle that Scooby Doo (my pappy) just called in for landing instructions.
The guy just left Palmettles (Palmetto, Florida, to most people) yesterday morning, and he’s already in Fargo!
I don’t know how the hell he does it!
That’s why I stayed up for seventy-seven hours in October 2004, the week my daughter was born.
It’s wild to think I was once foolish enough to think I could impress a guy who once spun three trips to New Jersey and back in a week.
We’ve all got to learn our lessons in our way, and, as Chuck used to say, those lessons don’t come cheap.
With the baby scheduled any day, I did what most would not do.
I signed on for a fifteen-hour shift that I split with a college clown from UND who hadn’t yet discovered alarm clocks, which made my fifteen-hour shit become eighteen most days.
Great thinking, Adam
During my six to nine-hour break, I’d cruise to the hospital to pop in with about as much labor support as the Twins batters gave the pitching staff in games three and four against the Astros.
Gee cripes.
One frosty morning during a harvester breakdown, I realized how tired I was when Chuck shot over to Grafton to grab parts while I collapsed on the first steering wheel I found, Prisoner of the Highway by Ronnie Milsap, lulling me off to sleep.
When he returned, Chuck shook me from my coma. I was somewhat embarrassed by the pool of drool dripping from the wheel but fresh as a daisy.
This must be how my pop feels after one of his infamous seven-minute power naps; I thought as I made my way for a third and final night at the hospital.
That week likely cost me seven years of my top-end life expectancy, but I made it without a scratch.
We finished beets in a sideways rainstorm, and afterward, I got scummy drunk on half a Busch Light and collapsed until the baby started crying.
Last week, I taught that baby to drive a beet truck and run the chisel plow.
Nineteen years later, I’m smiling like a doofus as it rains on our last few loads of sugar beets; I think back to that hellacious beet harvest with tears in my eyes.
I’m out here doing what I love, finally sharing it with the ones I love.
Nineteen years I waited for this.
That’s pretty gosh darn special.
It doesn’t matter if my daughter loves this farm life as much as me or if she decides it’s not for her and washes her hands of it.
The cool thing is she got to see what makes her old man tick, what drives him out of bed each morning.
Out here, she sees me in my element, my natural habitat.
Even if she doesn’t love it, I hope seeing my farming obsession inspires her to chase her thing, that thing that makes her feel like a kid again, whatever it might be.
I hope she never settles for less.
Not everybody finds that thing.
I’m fortunate and couldn’t be more grateful to have found it and to pass the torch, no matter where she takes it.
Cheers to finding yours.
Thanks for reading. I’ll catch up with ya next week.
Love this!
That was beautiful, babe