Beet harvest 2016

Sugar beet harvest is a crazy time on our farm with early mornings and late nights. I am at school or at home with the kids for the majority of harvest, so Boots and our truckers were my official photographers.

Tractor with Digger & Loaded Trailer

Sugar beets are a root crop, so they grow underground. The harvesting process begins with the defoliating tractor which rips the leaves off of the root.

Field of beets 1/2 defoliated and 1/2 not yet defoliated

Tractor and defoliator

Defoliated beet

Next, the beet digger uses a two part system to pull the beets up and run them through scrub rollers. These rollers then push the beets back to the elevator chain belt and into the tank. There are also Ferris wheel style diggers that circulate the beets into the tank.

Front view of Digger

Back view of Digger

Ferris wheel style digger

When the digger is full, it unloads into a trailer pulled by a semi. We use cage trailers which tip to unload, but there are also live bottom trailers which open at the end and use conveyor belts to drop the beets.

Digger loading a semi and trailer

Ground after the beets have been harvested

We grow beets for a company called Western Sugar, so we transport our loads to the local beet dump. This is usually the kids' favorite part (but I think it is just because they get candy at the weigh station).

Pulling into the weigh station so they
know how heavy the load of beets is.

My favorite truck driver (my dad)
with the printout from the weigh station

Pulling into the dumping area

Beets loading to be taken to the pile

Transport truck

Eventually, this large pile of beets will be hauled to the Western Sugar plant in Fort Morgan to be made into sugar.

Huge sugar beet pile

Comments

February Festivities

This is the first weekend in a while where we haven’t really had anything going on, so the kids and I went crazy with the crafts and activities! Valentine Boxes First, we made the girls’ valentines boxes. Bah wanted a Valentine Monster, and Boo (of course) wanted a pig. I saved her pig from last year for almost the entire year but a little before Christmas she wanted to play with it and Bubs destroyed it. So we made a new one. They turned out pretty cute, and I love that as the girls are getting older they are able to help more. Valentine Gift -Denim Pouch After that, we decided to get some sewing in by making pouches as Valentines for our cousins and friends. We cut pieces of old denim and sewed them to create pouches. Then, the kids cut shapes and letters out of felt to personalize them. This project was much faster than I expected, so we even had time to make bath bombs. Valentine Gift - Bath Bombs My kiddos all love bath bombs or bath fizzies, and they were excited ...

Muddin' and Shootin'

Cousin E and Bubs What do farm kids do in the winter? Not to sound too redneck, but, of course, they go out muddin' and shootin.' 😀 This Colorado January has had such crazy weather that it goes from three inches of snow to sunshine within two days. A few weekends ago, it peaked at almost 52 degrees, so we decided to head to the farm for some fun. The kids hadn't been out to the farm since harvest ended which meant they were very excited to play. Near the end of July, we upgraded our bench Gator to a two-row Ranger. While we were shopping, we bought the girls a little four wheeler for all of the hard work they had done over the summer. They were troopers out there every day helping us irrigate, giving up a family vacation to hoe pumpkins, and hardly complaining at all. Family-sized ride Since we bought it so late in the summer and then got busy with back to school and the opening of Pumpkins and More A-maiz-ing Farm , they didn't have much time to play w...

With a chick, chick here...

I think I may have gone completely crazy. We just added FOUR more animals to our brood. Yes, you read that right, FOUR. Now, not only do we have a dog, a pig, and two turtles, we also have four chickens. Bah is an animal lover - through and through. She is the pig whisper, worm charmer, and bug catcher. She has been asking for baby chicks for a few weeks now, and I kept telling her we had enough to keep us busy and didn't need any more animals. Then, her cousins got baby chicks and she (in her own words) just "couldn't stop thinking about baby chicks!" So after Boots and I had a long talk, we decided that maybe chickens would fit in fine with our little zoo. His reasoning was that he likes giving the kids responsibility and teaching them about where their food comes from. They know better than that food comes from the grocery store, but since we are not raising cows or meat-pigs, they do not have first hand experience with food-to-table animals. Therefore, w...

Family Farm Fun

Search This Blog