Monday - Sept. 22 We left Hartford Beach State Park in northeast South Dakota and headed north for Grand Forks, ND. A nice day with a south wind, we stopped in Fargo for fuel and arrived in East Grand Forks after lunch. We checked in to the Red River State Park (actually located in East Grand Forks, MN) and set up in site #100. The park was very nice, created after the 1997 flooding of the area. A neighborhood of homes had to be demolished after the record flood, they made the area in to a state park campground. Each site was large and spacious, with the streets and curbs from the housing area still present. Every home had all the utilities, electricity, water and sewer, so each site was a gravel pull through setup. The new levee system created included new parks on each side of the river and a very nice paved bike trail that we rode on during the week.
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| Red River State Recreation Park |
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| Site #100 in East Grand Forks |
Tuesday - We went to Express Employment to fill out our paperwork and watched the training video. We stopped at the Tractor Supply store and Gary picked up slip on galoshes for his work shoes. We also shopped at some of the thrift stores in town, I found some work boots there. We stopped and visited with our friends, Bill and Darla. They are the ones that recruited us to try it this year, Bill will be our crew foreman. He told us that we would have our first training on the piler machine the next day for a couple hours in the morning. We picked up groceries and a few other items at Walmart, then went home and organized our cold weather gear for working.
Wednesday - We went in at 8:00 AM and started our training on a sugar beet piler with Bill. He showed us how to operate the piler. Gary, Chris and I each took turns running the machine with Bill and also working on the ground crew. Working down there, we learned what our crew members would be doing to help make our process run smoothly. Each truck driver is given a ticket at the scale shack for their load, we had to write the piler number on the ticket. Randomly, trucks are given a sample ticket - a sample bag of their beets were taken to be tested in the lab for sugar content from their load. For the ground crew, this meant that midway through the truck load, a bag had to be placed on the sample chute and a button pushed to bring the sample beets into the bag - which was secured with a strap and snap. These bags were picked up by a courier and taken to the lab. After the trucks dumped their beet load in the gate, the ground crew guides the truck under the dirt conveyor, pushing a button to drop the dirt from their load back in to their truck. The grower wants the dirt back in their fields and the dirt weight is deducted from the weight for the load. Between trucks unloading, the ground crew shovels up the excess dirt and beets that sometimes falls around the piler.
After our two hour training, we went back to the park and cleaned up. We picked up Chris and Kirsten (friends we met in February with RVillage) and went to lunch at Paridisio, a Mexican restaurant. Kirsten was going to work in the lab for the harvest, helping in the process of testing the sample beets for sugar content. We had a great time catching up with them, since we had seen them in February. Back home, I worked on sewing alterations on a back cushion for the couch I had brought from Sioux Falls.
Thursday - Sunday - we were waiting for the harvest to start, so we ran errands, went on several bike rides on the bike trail, visited another thrift store, drove around Grand Forks, ND and East Grand Forks, MN (just separated by the Red River) and I redid our shower caulk, trying to solve the ongoing leak we have fought. The park had a nice shower house, we used that for two days when the silicone was drying. That night we went out to supper with Bill and Darla, Chris and Kirsten, and other sugar beet harvest campers. On Friday night, we attended the piler operator meeting at the plant. There the harvest manager went through the manual for piler operators and answered questions. Sunday morning we went to mass at St. Michael's Parish in Grand Forks, the largest parish in North Dakota. I spent the afternoon putting small rugs I had bought under the floor mats of the car and then I made seat covers for the car from a twin bedspread bought at a thrift store. Elastic and sewing - I had four seat covers to protect the seats from muddy, greasy clothing.
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| Beautiful parkways and bike trail |
Monday - Sept. 29 - our work begins. Gary, Chris and I went in for pre-piling work from 12-8 pm. We took turns watching Mary, the piler operator, and working on the ground crew.
Tuesday, we worked our first twelve hour day, working on the ground crew and operating the piler. Gary and Chris were pulled away to help set other pilers (putting them in position to start piles) and ended the day digging the mud out of a piler. We were each assigned a padlock, hard hat and safety vest for our working hours. We kept our hard hats and vests, but each day you had to pick up your padlock in the morning and hang it back in the job shack at the end of the day.
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| Back of the piler and cab |
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| Front of the piler with boom down |
Wednesday - Midnight, Oct. 1 - the harvest officially begins. The night shift worked midnight to 8 AM. We had to be there at 6:45 AM - to check in and then pick our ground crews from the workers there that morning. Bill directed a man to Gary that had worked the years before, Steve. He then picked three gals, two who had worked prior years. I talked to an older gentleman that had worked there before and picked two other guys. I had talked to our friend, Erin, who was going to be on the ground crews - she agreed to be on my crew. We talked briefly and then all went to our assigned piler locations. Gary was on Piler #5, I was on Piler #3, both piling beets inside large buildings. Of the 11 pilers, 4 were starting inside. Once there, we relieved the crews that had worked the night and got started with our twelve hour day. Shortly after we started, I received another crew member, a woman they assigned to my crew. We got started, moving the trucks through the gates, unloading their beets. Scary, but as the hours passed, the routine of running the hydraulic levers and switches to open the truck gates, turning the conveyor belts on and dumping the trucks became easier. It was nice to be working inside so our crews were not out in the weather. The challenge for us as piler operators was to be able to see how close our boom was to the pile in the limited lighting and to not get the boom caught in the roof beams of the buildings. Very tired at the end of the day, we went home and started our evening ritual - get the dirty layer of clothes off, make supper, shower, make lunch for the next day - unwind a little and then go to bed.
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| Starting the pile in the building |
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| Piler operator in training |
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| Beet truck waiting for their gate to open |
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| View from piler cab |
Thursday - we picked up the two guys that would ride with us each day, then off to the plant. (They all appreciated the seat covers in the car - we tried to take off our overalls and dirty boots at the end of the day, but we still were dirty. We had a storage tub in the back of the car that we put our dirty boots and coveralls in at the end of the day.) Luckily, the American Crystal Sugar plant where we were working was only about two miles away, so it did not take long to get there. Each morning, we saw some of the ground crew workers riding their bikes in the dark from town to the job site. We learned that many of them, including a couple of the guys on our crews, were living at the mission in town and working the harvest to earn money to travel to their families and their next jobs. Certainly made us appreciate the homes we have and the fact that we can choose the jobs we do. Later that day, we saw the trucks come in wet from rain.
Friday - Cooler and windy - again we were glad to be inside. We learned to work as a team together as the time passed. We had hand signals and a horn to communicate with each other and the trucks. Sometimes the trucks would start raising and try to dump before the opposite truck was done. We would have to beep the horn and have our ground crew explain that the conveyor belt could not handle two trucks dumping their beets at the same time. My piler machine was shut down early that afternoon for cleaning. Hard work for the crew and I - we had to shovel beets and mud out of the way of the gates and mud that was caught in the machine. Whenever the machine was shut down, we had to "lock out". The power lever for the machine was pulled and everyone had to put their lock on the lockout device for safety. Piler operators are the first to lock out and last to take their lock off. This insured that no one was in the machine when power was on. Late that afternoon, we could see that it was blowing and snowing outside! Small, fine flakes, it did not last very long.
Saturday - Sunday The days passed quickly - each day had many trucks, a lot of Red River Valley mud, breakdowns of the machines and hard work, long hours. From our crews, we worked with one of them to come up to the cab - we had to train them to run the piler for us for bathroom breaks and eventually, break times and lunch breaks. Our friend, Erin, was my relief - she learned quickly and did an awesome job. On Sunday - a sunny day, I came to work in the morning and found that my building had been filled and we were now piling on the cement ramp outside! What a difference to see the sun and all the other pilers and piles on the complex! And all the trucks - lines and lines of them at each of the piler stations. By the end of that day, after the five days of running the levers and switches on the piler and scooping mud, my wrists were very sore. I iced them that night, my left wrist joint was swollen.
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| How they contained the pile in the full building |
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| Ready to start the outside pile in front of the building |
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| Trucks lined up for some of the outside piles |
