Monday, October 4, 2010

#124 Just A Couple Of Tired Beet Pilers

I know everyone has been in touch wanting to know what's going on. I told you the blog may be somewhat neglected while we worked our 12 hour shifts & that is exactly what happened. First let me say that I didn't know being retired could be so exhausting. 16 months away from working & jumping right into 12 hour shifts has knocked us for a loop. We come home, eat, shower, & go to bed. Sleep is instantaneous & morning comes way too soon. Also I will never take another teaspoon of sugar for granted.

Our job is basically to unload the sugar beet trucks & pile the beets for processing later. We don't physically do this. The trucks dump into a hopper & a series of conveyor belts take the beets, separate the dirt, & pile the beets. We then use another conveyor to put the dirt back into the trucks & the process starts all over again. After 4 days our pile is 20' tall & the size of a large city block. It takes 5-10 minutes to walk around it. The harvest could go on for another week or so depending on the weather. At times when things slow down we shut the machine down & climb in, over, & around the machine shoveling & scraping dirt & mud from the machine. With the machine all spiffy(wink,wink) we start with the beets again.

Today the weather has warmed up so they stopped accepting beets because they can't pile them if they are too warm. This gave us half the day off. We took full advantage of it & went home & took a nap. Then we got up & did laundry so we will be ready to go tomorrow if the beets are cool enough. If not we may get the day off or we will go in & maybe only work another half day. This has been quite an experience & the money is good but I don't know if I will do the beet harvest again.

On another note we found out that the show "Extreme Home Make Over" is doing a build right here in Fargo. There was a big town meeting to sign up volunteers & meet the crew & the potential families at the Fargo Dome on the campus of NDSU. They finally announced the family & the plans for the home. This project is supposedly going to involve moving the existing home & then adding on to it. It will be interesting to see. We won't see it while we are here but will probably watch it on TV with the rest of the world.

On a personal note I just want to send out our prays & positive thoughts for our friend Patty who is soon to have major surgery. Get well soon.

Well morning comes around soon enough, so us beet pilers are going to call it a night from our home in Fargo because......

Home is where we park it,
Frank & Mary

2 comments:

  1. WOW! Two things to say, 1st, glad it's GOOD money! 2nd, glad it's you and not me!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for thinking about me and thank you for your prayers. Surgery was rescheudled to Thursday 10/7. I can't wait to be on the other side of the surgery.
    I can just see the two of you all beet colored up!!! Have fun, I miss you both, thank you for sharing your adventures with me. Patti Morehart

    ReplyDelete