Beet harvest has begun! But before they can be harvested all that leafy matter must be removed. The Beet Topper or Defoliator (because it removes foliage) is an implement that removes the stems and leaves from a sugar beet. Its process that involves cutting and pummelling. Suffice to say (or don't) that it removes the leaves and stems.
Like so.
Then along comes the harvester with is sometimes called a sugar beet lifter or digger. It works in much the same way as the onion harvester, except that it is actually lifting the beets up out of the ground. It does this with a series of angled disc wheels. These discs' angles are such that as they pull through the ground the narrowing angle squeezes the beets up out of the ground.
You might have noticed that the sugar beet harvester has bins on it. It can collect beets and then dump them when it's full so that the truck doesn't run over any.
While not a particularly charismatic tuber, the sugar beet is a pretty neat one. Unlike sugar cane which will only grow in the tropics, sugar beets grow just about anywhere. These will be shipped off to be put in one of the massive piles you might have seen. (I had some pictures, but apparently my lens fogged up.) From there they get put into larger trucks, or in some places, trains. They'll then head off to a factory to be made in to neat things like granulated sugar, which we all love.
So if you live outside of the tropics, when you buy sugar, you might just buy beet sugar. Who knows, the economy you strengthen just might be your own.
That sugar beet truck reminds me of when I worked at the beet dump in Homedale one fall, working up in the machine as a tare man. Three of us up there had to take a sample bucketful from each truck load and wire brush off all of the dirt so that it could be weighed, then set as a ratio against the weight of the truckload of product, and deducted from the final weight. My hand was numb every night I worked there. I suppose carpal tunnel might be the result for some folks, but I was lucky. I haven't seen that dump near the airport lately, but I haven't been in Homedale in early November for years.
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