I didn’t include revenue numbers this month because we haven’t actually gotten a paycheck yet from the beet harvest. Once the beet harvest is complete I will do a final accounting of the money spent here and money made. It was a rough month, one of the highest we have had with $5,313 spent. Details are below and this is going to be short and to the point, because it’s 3am and I am very tired.
Campground Fees – Under budget at $292 because part of the month was covered by Alaska Work Kamping and part was covered by Beet Harvest work kamping.
Groceries – Over by$259. Part Alaska, part Canada, part stocking up in advance of harvest, part we just buy to much food.
Dining Out – Over a little bit but not bad. Offset by spending $0 in entertainment this month.
Memberships – Spent $177 which was our $80 America the Beautiful pass for National Parks and my very first AARP membership. America the Beautiful more than paid for itself last year and I bought the AARP because people talk about the discounts they get. Plus why not…if you turn 50 …own it!!
Truck Fuel – Over by $649. Alaska, Alaska, Alaska. I can’t stress enough, when you are thinking about how much it will cost factor in the going and returning.
Truck Maintenance – Alignment repairs for $424one of the few things not covered under our warranty and caused by Alaska roads. Almost everyone I know who goes has some sort of related truck/RV expense so again factor that in.
Clothing – The $199was directly attributable to beet harvest clothing. Boots for me and long johns for both of us. Not everything will be found at thrift stores. I will factor that cost into that analysis when the revenue all comes in.
Gift/Postage – We sent a large gift to my nephew and it ended up costing about $150 in postage and shipping materials all together. Ever start something thinking it wouldn’t cost that much then it ends up costing a bunch more than you though? Well that’s what happened. What can I say, it’s expensive shipping a large caribou skull. Who knew??
Home Maintenance – Went over by about $77. Not sure why. To tired to figure it out.
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It rained pretty heavily last night with some lightning, so it turned out to be a good thing we weren’t working. We called the hotline in the evening, but they said they would assess and post by 4am, but with the amount of rain we had I couldn’t imagine working the next day. Still that requires that one of us gets up at 4am and checks the hotline. Kind of a bummer, but probably for the best because we don’t want our sleep schedule to change that much. It’s worse for Kyle and Jenny on nights. They were called off last night as well, but it’s tough for them to find stuff to keep you awake when nothing in town is open. Even the casinos here close at 2am. Speaking of which, Jen has her casino trips down to a science. She spends $2 on nickel slots and can sit for a couple of hours drinking free diet cokes and eating free snacks. It’s a budget friendly thing for them to do though and when their $2 is gone they go home, I’m just not sure I have that kind of self-control.
Lee got up at 4am to check the message, they said call back at 6 and then said call back at 8. He let me sleep until 6:15am which was nice, but then we had to shower and get ready. We weren’t sure if the message would say come in now, with the expectation we would be dressed and ready to go or give us a time. At 8am we called back and were told to report at noon, so we did have plenty of time to get ready. Since I had some extra time I thought I would respond to feedback from folks and give more detail on the process. First off the beets are white, sugar beets (not the red kind people eat) and they are used to make sugar. That’s the tail end of the overall process and we don’t see any of it, but I have heard it is similar to how they get sugar from sugar cane. A pulp is created from the beets, then dried, and sugar is extracted. That’s all I know. We were told that that some of the end product ends up in white sugar packets, but the bulk off it is purchased by commercial companies who need sugar in their products, like Coke or Pepsi .
We are more at the front end of the process and it goes like this.
This is a field of sugar beets. (We have no idea what the hell happens before this. Magic, I guess. – Lee)
This is a sugar beet.
The farmers dig up the beets. They use a beet harvester.
Sugar beets are root tubers, and grow underground, and the timing of when they are harvested is done in conjunction between the farmers and the Agriculturist from Sidney Sugars, Catherine. They can’t be dug up if it is too hot or too cold, or the fields are too muddy. The tops are trimmed off in the field and loaded into trucks, either 10 wheel dump trucks or tractor trailer bin trucks. We don’t do any of that, it’s done by the farmers and then driven to Sugar Valley by employees or contract drivers, and once it gets to our piler yard, our process begins.
First, the trucks drive up to a scale and a scale house, and are weighed and given an unloading ticket. (More on the ticket later) Then the trucks drive into the yard, which is about 2500 feet long, and about 1000 feet wide, on which there are 6 “lanes”, at the end of each is a piler. At the moment, the pilers and the piles we just started are all the way at the opposite end of the yard from the scale houses, but by the time we are done, the pilers and piles will be right next to the scale houses. The truck drivers choose a piler, and a side (the pilers operate two sides, left and right), and drive up to it, where they wait their turn to be waved ahead. Once they get the go ahead, they drive over the hopper (the doors/gates are down), and stop.
Hopper is flat so trucks can drive over it
The gates are raised, creating the “hopper” and then the driver is directed to back up until his rear wheels are just touching the shorter gate, so his rear end is hanging over the hopper.
Hopper is opened
As you can see, at the bottom of the hopper is a conveyor belt, and once the truck is in position, the driver is instructed to either lift his dump truck, just a little, or open the rear door on his bin trailer. The dump trucks are hinged at the top, and once they are lifted, all the weight of the beets pushes the door open and the beets just started spilling out, so we start slow otherwise the beets will fill the hopper and overflow, and will then need to be picked up by hand, which is not fun.
Truck gate Lifts and beets come out. This bin-type truck has a conveyor belt of its own which pushes the beets out.
The beets go up that short hopper belt and are dumped onto the main conveyor, which runs perpendicular to the hopper belt. The main conveyor takes them up to about 12 feet, and dumps them into a screening area, which is a series of rollers that knock most of the dirt off onto a holding tank. Then they go up another conveyor belt on the boom, which then dumps them down on to the pile. At the very beginning, the boom is parallel to the ground at about 6 feet, but as the pile grows, it’s lifted up to a final height of 18 feet. The boom also swings left and right, creating a semicircular pile. Once the pile gets close to touching the boom, the system is shut down, and all of the components of the rig are lifted with hydraulics, and then giant tracks like a tank have can roll the entire rig backward about three feet and we continue the pile. So at the end of the harvest, there will be a pile about 2000 feet long, and about 200 feet wide, and 18 feet high. That’s a bunch of beets.
The beets stay cool in the pile and eventually metal pipes are added under the beets to keep them cool. Don’t know anything about that yet, because I haven’t seen it but we were told the beets stay pretty cool in the pile. The agriculturist is responsible for monitoring that and she does it with a temperature gun. Again, that’s about all I know because thankfully it’s not my problem 🙂
While the beets are on the conveyor belt we get a ticket from the driver and if it is a certain type of ticket we have to take a sample. The farmers get paid based on weight and sugar content and the samples are tested in the lab and determine the sugar content. No clue how that works, it’s done in a different place. The only reason we pilers care about the samples is because it adds an extra step to our process. Essentially when the beets are traveling down the conveyor belt, a mechanical arm grabs some and puts the “sample” down a funnel, which you catch in a burlap bag at the end. Sounds easy, but you need to make sure you get beets from the right truck so you really can’t dawdle. Plus the beets come down in a rush and it’s hard to hold the bag in place.
Sample ticket goes in pouch in bag
Marie is putting the sack around the funnel
We push a button and the catcher comes out and grabs some beets
Then places it in the funnel
The beets rumble down and we get a sack full
I just don’t like it because the beets hit fast and you have to hold on hard to keep the sack on. Then you carry the sack over to the sample cart. Once the truck is empty, it pulls forward under another belt which is attached to the dirt holding tank. Then we dump the dirt back into their truck so they can be weighed on the way out. The farmers are paid based on a variety of factors, and one of them is how much dirt comes along with the beets, so that weight is subtracted from their starting weight.
So that’s the basic process. We went in at noon today and the fields were pretty muddy. My boots are great in that they are water proof, but man do they pick up a lot of mud. I told Marie her step counter should give us extra steps because sometimes even walking was an effort. The first hour was ok, about 50 but in layers I was plenty warm, but then it started to drizzle. And it didn’t stop, so I added a poncho to my layers which helped some but didn’t totally keep me dry. After another hour when trucks started to get stuck in the mud they called it and I was happy to go home. It truly gave me a new appreciation for the four hour “stay pay” we get if we get called off. If my choice is stay home and be bored or work in the rain and mud, I choose staying at home. And in case I have inadvertently made this all sound glamorous, here’s my end of shift photo from today. I’ve still got my smile, but it was only two hours. -Trace
Check out the amount of mud on my boots. It was several inches thick.
Wednesday, October 6, 2016
I keep talking about Jen and Kyle because I think their night shift experience is important. Keep in mind we didn’t know until the very end we would be on days, so their experience could have been ours. I say that in particular today because they went in at 6pm last night to scrape and clean and oil the machines. It was raining, extremely windy, and 43 degrees by this point and I felt for them. They were done by 7pm and they are getting paid 6 hours for the shift which is a good thing. Hopefully we are getting paid for 6 hours yesterday as well. I should also mention that I heard second hand that the other pile yards without a night crew have to do their own machine cleaning at the end of their shift. That would be a tough way to end a 12 hour day, which makes me very glad we have a night shift we can rely on. (I think this is a very important thing for people who are considering doing the beet harvest to remember. Every piling site is different, so you don’t know what you’re getting until you get assigned, which happens generally in early to mid August. -Lee)
I woke up at 3am and got up to let Lee sleep. When I walked outside to smoke it was 37 degrees, very windy, and miserable. My first thought was: I really hope we don’t have to work in this. I am no stranger to the cold. I lived in New Hampshire for 13 years and as a smoker went outside in all kinds of weather, but there is a big difference between standing outside in cold for 5 minutes and doing it for a 12 hour shift. This was my biggest concern all along, the weather impact. I understand why people do this though. Yesterday Piler 4 was down and that work crew was sent to other pilers. I spent some time talking to Mike who has been full timing for 10 years. Over those 10 years he has done every kind of work to supplement his retirement and this is his fourth beet harvest. Prior to this he worked Amazon for 3 years and MUCH prefers the beet harvest. Mike spent many years working for himself and hated the micromanagement of the Amazon environment. Here at the beet harvest, he comes out and does his thing, with minimal oversight. Compare that to mandatory “rah-rah”speeches (his words) and stretching and exercises of Amazon, and for him it is no contest. I get it. I like the relaxed atmosphere as well and the level of respect we are all treated with. I just don’t know if I can hack the weather, but if these cold temperatures persist I am certainly going to find out.
(time slowly passes, and we watch an episode of The Walking Dead waiting for the update. Watching The Walking Dead at 7am is surreal…-Lee)
Thankfully not today. We called at 8am and the message said it was too windy to run the boom and the grounds were too muddy, so no work for safety reasons. As Lee said, we went from “We’re bored” to “Thank God we don’t have to work” in less than 24 hours.
(I have to say, I’m struggling with this quite a lot. My work ethic and my desire to pretty much always be doing something productive makes this sitting around doing nothing really unpleasant, and it doesn’t help that it’s a LOT of time for us to be cooped up in the camper together. We’re going on 2 1/2 weeks of this, it’s reminiscent of our time in the redwoods last fall. On the other hand, the site is free, and we do get paid 4 hours each to just sit here and kill time, so at least there’s that. The weather forecast calls for cold and partly cloudy for the next two weeks, with no real chance of any rain, so once this stuff dries up we’re probably looking at two weeks or more of 12 hour days, 7 days a week, so I suppose I should appreciate the down time now. – Lee)
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I was asleep by 9pm and slept like the dead. I was wide awake at 3am feeling slightly hung over. I was dehydrated, so I definitely need to drink more water. My left hip was a little sore, nothing too serious. My feet feel surprisingly good. The worst of it is my right shoulder. Still feeling the sharp pains, but not all the time. It’s very much related to position. I took a couple Advil, had a hot shower and added a new Icy Hot Patch which helped. We also have better snacks for today (more fruit) and I am going to make a large salad to take for lunch. The pb&j sandwiches from yesterday just didn’t get it done. Mentally I also feel great. Really proud of what we did yesterday, and thinking about ways we can improve our performance/make things a little easier. The entire yard did 600 trucks yesterday and Bill, our foreman, said it was one of the best first days he has ever seen. He has more new people than he usually does (our team for example is all new people) and he felt we did really well. I did also, and that is a credit to their leadership and the work ethic of the crews. We made some really big piles of beets! Saturday morning I felt really good. Shoulder gave me no problem. It did progressively get hotter though and by noon it was close to 80. At that point the beet temperature was 51 degrees (at 55 they start to decompose which is bad) and they shut down the operation for the day. Many people were bummed because Saturday is all day OT, but I was fine with a half day. It’s helping me ease into this and gave us a chance to go to the Walmart in Williston. We bought several items and I am going to list them because they ere things I wish I had on the first day.
Four Gildan Pocket T-Shirts – I had no idea I would be in my T-shirts without a shirt cover and since all mine have sentimental value, I bought 4 new ones. Wish I would have bought them at a thrift store, but some will hopefully be wearable after this.
Dr. Scholl’s Massaging Gel Ultra Thin Inserts – The arch support is fine in the boots but my toes and heel are getting a little tired. Maybe these will help.
Fruit of the Loom Work Gear Heavy Duty Tube Socks – The top of my boot is rubbing on my calf and I thought I was being a big baby until I saw a red rash circle forming on both legs. I bought men’s tube socks because the women’s section only had crew which wont go high enough.
Contigo 20 oz coffee mug – Lee lost his mug months ago and appropriated mine. I never replaced it because it wasn’t a big deal, but you have to drive to the sugar shack to get coffee and in the mornings I want it for the caffeine and the warmth.
Thermos 16oz – Lee loves his, but again I never really felt I needed one until now. I am going to try taking some soups, spaghettios, etc for lunch. The salad I ate today was really good, but hot food will be great on the colder days which according to the forecast are coming early next week.
Mack’s Earplugs – The noise doesn’t bother me at all, which is surprising since I usually hate loud noises. It’s kind of rythymic, like a Stomp concert. Still, I get close to take advantage of the shade and wind break and I know I need to protect my hearing. I’ve tried all kinds of plugs and hate them all, but Marie had these cool silicon ones that swimmers use that stay outside the ear drums. I’m excited about giving these a try and appreciate her passing it along.
It was $90 in all, but most of it is not beet harvest specific and even if it was, I just don’t care. Plus we got to try out the Grand Buffet in Williston and it was awesome. For $8.50 each (20% off special) we got 4 large tables full of choices including shrimp and crablegs. YUM!! Best Chinese buffet we have had in a year. Then I was super tired and we went back and another early to bed. Tomorrow should be cooler, but it may rain so we will see what happens.
Because I’m not a slacker, I woke up at 2:19am. My eyes just popped open, and I was wide awake, and felt great. No aches, no pains. Probably because I’m much, much younger (Screw you, maybe it’s because you pushed buttons all day. Trying doing some real work 😛 – Trace). Shush, this is my section of the post. You can tell, because it’s in italics, and funnier than your medical reports. Also, it’s not all buttons. There are levers and stuff too. Anyway……I ran to the store last night to pick up some junk food for Trace to have on hand, apples and grapes and such, and ran into the foreman who was also at the deli getting some heart healthy pastrami for his lunches. He told me that it was a 600 truck day, and a normal day shift is 800 trucks, so we did pretty well for a first day. Night shift typically gets only 400 trucks. More on that later. – Lee
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Today it was hard to know how many layers to wear. There was wind, but it was warm. Rain was called for, but also highs of 70. I started with my thin flannels, but after walking around a few minutes quickly realized I was too hot so removed them before leaving the house. I do recommend that. Get dressed, start moving outside a bit (packing the truck or whatever) then decide. There is no great changing area out in the piling yard, and although I don’t mind removing layers in my car, it’s not easy. Some folks use the porta john to change, but personally I’d rather avoid that. We also carry extra layers in the truck. Yesterday I went from a heavy flannel, to a light flannel, to a T-shirt and that worked pretty well for me. The hard hat is still bothering me as well so today I am trying a baseball cap under it. Yesterday I used my RV-Dreams visor and that helped enough that I think a full baseball hat might do the trick. I hope so, because when we went looking for helmet liners in Williston yesterday no one sold them. Helmets yes, accessories no.
We listened to the message in the morning and it said come in at 6am but then we drove there and were told the beets were still too hot and we were called off for the day. We will get paid 4 hours OT for the day, but 12 would have been better. Not sure why they didn’t know that earlier in the day because obviously we would have preferred just staying home and not driving in. It’s only a 13 mile drive to the fields, but since we go through two small towns with lots of lights it takes about 25 minutes to get there, even at 5:15 am. Since it’s was supposed to rain all morning I wasn’t totally upset, but then it turned out to be a beautiful day, sunny, 70, and a cool breeze. That’s a bummer. It would have been the perfect day to get out a little, but neither of us felt like it, so after cleaning and laundry, we lounged around all day. I should probably mention there is no “normal” season here. Last year we heard they worked 21 days straight and the year before that every third day or so they had weather delays. I don’t mind having the days off, heck I would far prefer that to 21 days straight, but it would be nice if they were spread out a little more and not on Saturdays and Sundays, because those are the big money days. 🙂
We spent the day feeling cooped up and getting on each others nerves. Since we got up so early we didn’t really feel like going well and the day really dragged on. The highlight though was when Jen and Kyle stopped by. They didn’t go in at all on nights and they spent some time telling us about their shift. It’s totally different from ours and they totally cheered us up. Much more laid back, all younger people, and far less volume. It is colder though, but they are allowed to sit in their cars during down times. They spent some time cleaning inside one of the pilers and Jen said it wasn’t that bad and they both seem to like it. I should also mention that we are hearing that each site is a little different. Quite a bit depends on who your foreman is and your agriculturist and they aren’t all run quite the same, so you would see some variation depending on what yard you worked in and what shift. I’m still glad we are on days though, but if you were looking for something at a slower pace and more relaxed, nights might be a good option for you. – Trace
Monday, October 3, 2016
Lee got up at 4 and called the hotline. We were called off again for rain and thunderstorms, but this time we didn’t have to go in. Lee stayed up. I went back to bed until about 6am, but looking at a long day to fill. I think I’ve partly figured out why we are so antsy. Normally our campsites have a great view of nature and are located in areas that are the perfect jumping off point for seeing cool stuff. Nothing much up here except for the Teddy Roosevelt park, which we already saw, and our view is of the road and our next door neighbor. Normally we like to sit outside which makes our living space bigger. Since there is near constant road noise, we are inside instead and it doesn’t take long to start to feel like you are on top of each other. If we were at work as much as we expected to be working the place we are staying wouldn’t matter, because it would all be about sleep and work. Not so great though with all this down time. – Trace
We’ve known since we got here that they don’t operate when it’s too hot, because that starts a composting process that can destroy an entire pile of beets. They don’t operate when it’s too cold, because they don’t want the beets to be handled if they’re frozen. They don’t operate when it’s too windy because the long boom that piles the beets can sway in the wind and become damaged. They don’t operate in heavy rain or really wet ground because trucks get stuck. Beets are a picky crop apparently. Knowing something and experiencing it are two different things. We’re just bored, and still wondering what it will look and feel like to actually work a string of 12 hour days. Until we do it, we just don’t know, and waiting is just the absolute worst. On the plus side, we do get paid 4 hours of “stay pay” on days we don’t work, and we aren’t spending money on a campsite. So there’s that. I’m sure once we’ve been working 10 straight 12 hour days we’ll be praying for a blistering hot freezing cold windy day with a thunderstorm. But we’ve been here for 14 days and actually worked a total of about 18 hours. So for now, we wait. And wait. And wait. – Lee
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We were given our assignments first thing in the morning and were on Piler #2 with Marie, Marvin, and Robert. Lee was assigned to be the operator and the rest of us were helpers. Since the area around our piler (Piler #2) was still a muddy mess, they put us on Piler #3 with a very experienced team who had done the harvest several years in a row. They were super helpful and around 11 the foreman was comfortable enough with us that we were able to open one of the two lanes of our piler. The whole team seriously did great. We communicated well, helped each other, and were really having a good time. The weather was also great, in the 60’s, and overcast with the occasional sun breaks. We even had a rainbow or two. The work is also not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. There are places and times between trucks to sit down, and you are encouraged to do so during any down time, or when a big truck is dumping its beets, or if there’s a large enough gap between trucks. Our vehicle was close by so we could get water and snacks whenever we needed to, and the port-a-john was very close and at least for now extremely clean. Yes, the work is dirty, but it’s clean farm dirt, and their processes were excellent. As someone who studies processes and efficiency professionally, I do not say that lightly.
Lee, me, Marvin, and Marie first thing in the morning Day 1
Robert and Marie – Day 1
Our piler #2
This is a piler
Around hour 9 though (3pm) we all started to get a little tired and by hour 10 it was getting a little tough. Marie had a step counter watch and by 3pm she wa at 8,000 which was pretty good. She said most days she had to got to some effort to get to 6,000. Around 4:30pm, I went to take a beet sample, and picked up the sack wrong and felt a sharp pain in my left shoulder muscle. I let my team know and they were great. I wanted to finish the day so I just asked the others to take the sample and focused on tasks I could do mostly one-handed. I told Bill my foreman (who is absolutely awesome by the way) about it right away and he said I could stop and fill out an incident report, but I really wanted to wait. It actually started to feel a little better, but at 6pm when we were relieved I went and filled one out. All I can say was it was 100 times better than I thought it would be. Yes the weather was great, and yes, it was day 1, but I kind of liked it. I will say though that I am not a huge fan of wearing a hard hat 🙂 – Trace
We all enjoyed the rainbow
Trace wanted me to explain how I got to be an operator. It’s not really that complicated, first they ask everyone if they’ve ever had any experience doing it, and then they ask if anyone would like to be considered for training if an opportunity comes up. I had been up in the cockpit of one of the pilers when we did our orientation, and it looked less complicated than a 10 input video switcher, so I figured I could learn it pretty quick. Besides, it’s beets, not rocket surgery. So when they asked for volunteers to be trained I raised my hand, assuming that after a few days they would put me next to an operator to observe and get trained. The next day we came in and they had posted the list of crews, and it was me as the operator, and Trace and three other new people as ground crew. But the guy that taught me did a great job, and it’s really not that different from directing live television, but with more dirt and less bitching from audio engineers.
The pay is $1 more per hour, which is not a ton, but it adds up, especially when 4 hours of each 12 hour day is OT, and all 12 hours on Saturday and Sunday are OT. Plus there’s a 5% bonus at the end of the harvest, so that’s also pretty cool. I’ve worked less for more money, and harder for less money, but it’s still a blast. Today one side (lane) of our piler was not used because it was too muddy, so I’ll be very curious to see what it’s like operating both sides instead of just one. I really think it will be a little easier, because once you get into a rhythm it’s easier for me to stay focused non-stop and go back and forth between the two lanes than constantly be stopping and resting every five minutes. Sort of how like driving interstate is less tiring than stop and go city traffic. We’ll see. I identified some likely places to mount a Go Pro and I’m figuring out when and where I can grab footage here and there over the next few days so I can put together a short video that shows the entire process of bringing a truck through. Because that’s what we do. Over and over and over and over. 800 trucks in each 12 hour shift, on 6 pilers. I have to say it was really a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to doing it again tomorrow. Sorry this little blurb wasn’t all that funny, but I’m really tired, and really hungry, and besides, beets aren’t all that funny either. Beets are serious bidnizz, ya’ll. – Lee
In the meantime here’s some pictures of the process – Trace
Truck drives up
Beets come out of the truck into a hopper
These are the beets
Marvin directs the drivers to pour their beets into the hoppers.
When there is an issue we can get s spill. Thankfully that doesn’t happen often because we have to pick up the beets by hand and some are the size of a football and pretty heavy
If it’s a bad spill we call over a bobcat to clean them up. We only had to do this a couple of times and usually it was something wrong with the truck that caused it
The beets go from the hopper to the conveyor belt
The dirt comes out the side and goes into the empty truck which we help back into place
The beets (sans dirt) go out the boom and onto the pile. The boom rotates slowly left to right then back
Our pile was super pretty! As helpers we raise the boom periodically to get the top as even as we can
Lee operates the boom and the hoppers that the trucks put them in
Lee’s controls. He can’t see the entire pile so we are his eyes on the ground.
Our pile was almost 18 feet tall by the end of the day!! When it gets that high we move the piler backwards a few feet, but we haven’t done that yet
So all in all good day with a great team. It’s Day 1 but feeling good so far.
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which helped. We also have better snacks for today (more fruit) and I am going to make a large salad to take for lunch. The pb&j sandwiches from yesterday just didn’t get it done. Mentally I also feel great. Really proud of what we did yesterday, and thinking about ways we can improve our performance/make things a little easier. The entire yard did 600 trucks yesterday and Bill, our foreman, said it was one of the best first days he has ever seen. He has more new people than he usually does (our team for example is all new people) and he felt we did really well. I did also, and that is a credit to their leadership and the work ethic of the crews. We made some really big piles of beets! Saturday morning I felt really good. Shoulder gave me no problem. It did progressively get hotter though and by noon it was close to 80. At that point the beet temperature was 51 degrees (at 55 they start to decompose which is bad) and they shut down the operation for the day. Many people were bummed because Saturday is all day OT, but I was fine with a half day. It’s helping me ease into this and gave us a chance to go to the Walmart in Williston. We bought several items and I am going to list them because they ere things I wish I had on the first day.
– I had no idea I would be in my T-shirts without a shirt cover and since all mine have sentimental value, I bought 4 new ones. Wish I would have bought them at a thrift store, but some will hopefully be wearable after this.
– Lee lost his mug months ago and appropriated mine. I never replaced it because it wasn’t a big deal, but you have to drive to the sugar shack to get coffee and in the mornings I want it for the caffeine and the warmth.
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