Beet Harvest Day 19 – Climbing the MASSIVE Beet Pile

Morning Conditions:

Only 200 acres of Beets Left to Pile

Even though the growers estimated finishing yesterday, they didn’t. We heard this morning that one grower still has 150 acres left and the second has 50 acres to pull.

Apparently, the grower with 150 acres started calling other growers for help, but next week the forecast shows snow. Those other growers also have soybeans they need to get out of the ground before that. So, we’re on standby. 🤷‍♀️

Today, our crew from Piler 6 joined with the crew from Piler 8. We’re going to work an hour on, hour off switching crews on the hour every hour. The Piler 5 crew joined to do the same with Piler 7.

Snow in the Forecast

Next week, the longer term forecast shows a distinct seasonal shift. The tempertures will plummet and snow or mixed precipitation will arrive.

It’s the talk of all the crews…who’s going where after the harvest and which way. We’re going west. We have not chosen an exact route yet because we want to get a little closer to the storm to see what it actually does.

Climbing the Beet Pile

Night shift relieved us at 2pm and we had a site-wide meeting in the Middle Yard.

They told us a list of everyone staying for one more day of cleaning and they called our names. Since one grower still had trucks coming in, we’d have a piler to clean in the morning.

Our foreman also told us we could climb a beet pile!

Clearly…we had to climb it!

He had us climb pile 6 since no beets had been added in about 4 days, it had settled the most.

Surprisingly, it was an easy climb. Nothing like going down the “uncomfortably loose” terrain into Middle Moody Canyon on the Hayduke. Occasionally the beets shifted, but not too bad.

A good number of us climbed up and others watched from the bottom.

Karma brought his drone up so we could get the full scale of the pile we created. Our foreman said it was 1550 long and 28 feet high.

Afternoon Off for Chores

Since we finally have an afternoon off, we plan to reorganize the mess of our van.

We did a first solid sweep of the dirt and dust, but don’t want to go too crazy because we’ll work tomorrow.

Main goal for this afternoon: make fresh coco coir for our composting toilet. We buy it in coco coir bricks to save space, but that means we have to prepare it about 12 hours ahead of switching it.

All in all, we’re stoked we climbed the beet pile! 🧗‍♀️ 🧗‍♂️

Afternoon Conditions: