Halloween

Ah, Halloween is finally here! Instead of carving a pumpkin this year, Alison just wanted to draw on it. That still leaves the opportunity for pumpkin pie, so she was pretty excited.



Alison and Eli got to have at least one more Halloween being a matched set. Alison was Little Bo Peep and Eli was a sheep. It wasn't until today that he'd actually leave the hat on, but after the party at the Community Center, he actually seemed to enjoy it!

Done?

It's raining again. I think that means the end of beet season for me. It was fun while it lasted - all in all I had 68 loads delivered to the plant in 9 days of work. And a parting picture of the equipment.

Now it's back to regular work for me. The office is slowly getting back to normal, but it appears that I lost my computer to the raging waters. My desk was reassembled today, so now it's a matter of cleaning up and getting re-settled.

Back at it

Back to beets again today - fields were still very soft, but still got 9 runs into the plant today, total of 46 trips now. Alison took up her job as photographer at home today, so here's a few of her photos.

Noah who?

Still too wet to harvest beets, but things are looking positive for the weekend. I was planning on working in the office this week until things dried out, but a water main burst in the office on Monday and filled the building with about 3 to 4 inches of water. Now it is too wet to work outside, and too wet to work inside.
We took the kids to Maplewood State Park on Monday afternoon to see the leaves, and it was a great display.



Tuesday I recovered some of my personal items from the office so they didn't get damaged from the humidity, then spent the morning browsing Scheels and Gander Mountain.

I had a very short stint of work this morning giving a presentation to a GIS meeting in Bismarck. I left here about 5:30, drove to Bismarck, and was done by about 10:30. It's dry in Bismarck, which was nice. Since I had some time, I drove home by way of a promising hunting spot. I pulled the truck off to the side of the road and proceeded to shoot two pheasants, miss a few more, and generally have a grand old time. I walked back to the truck, started down the road and was home by 4:30. It's a rough life. I walked in the door and Alison greeted me just like I was coming home from work. I think I'll keep that little secret to myself.

I'm still shut down for both beets and office work tomorrow, so I'm going to make the best of things. I hope to get new tires for Jennifer's car early in the morning, then perhaps sneak out in search of pheasants again.

Duck weather

As predicted, it was much to wet to even think about harvesting sugar beets this weekend. The southwest got snowed on, so I spent Saturday morning duck hunting about an hour and a half southwest of here. My neighbor and I left at about 5 in the morning and started putting out decoys in the dark at about 6:30. Ducks were already trying to land in our decoys before we were done setting decoys. By the time it was light enough to identify birds, things had settled down a bit. The first two birds to come into the decoys were a pair of Canada geeese. I was astonished when they committed to land and worked to plop right down the landing zone I had set up. I managed to get one, but didn't shoot at the second goose because I wasn't sure if the shotgun load would be big enough to cleanly finish the bird. Well, apparently it was and I finally got my first goose. I weighted it when I got home and it was 11 1/2 pounds. We also took home 6 blue winged teal, one green winged teal drake, and a gadwall.

Rained out

We've been shut down for beet harvest since Sunday evening. Sunday and Monday saw an inch and a half of rain and made everything a muddy mess. So, back to reality for a while. There's more rain forecast for the weekend, so I don't know when we'll be back to harvesting. I was hoping to go fill an antelope tag this weekend, but they're forecasting 6-10 inches of snow for my hunting unit. So, it's duck hunting nearby instead.

Our neighbor called me this morning and said "You wouldn't believe the size of the track in our back yard! I don't know if it's a big deer or a moose!"

It's a moose. Mind you, moose bites can be very nasti.



There's been several moose sightings around here lately, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

The beet goes on

After living in the valley for 14 years now, I figured it was about time to participate in the fall sugar beet harvest. I'm driving truck for a grower near Hillsboro. Load beets, drive, dump beets, drive, load beets, drive, dump...repeat for 12 hours. I snapped a few random pictures today. It'll probably be pretty quiet on the blog front for a while until harvest is done.

Following the beet lifter:


One of six pilers at the processing plant. Yes, that is a LOT of beets.


Ha. Ha.


I discovered a new smell today. On my first run into the plant my air brakes cammed over and caught fire at the weigh scale. After the flames were put out by the fieldman I weighed in then limped the truck out of the way until the brakes stopped smoking. I was able to get to the piler and dump my load, and that's when I discovered the new smell...burnt brakes and processed sugar beets. It's, uh, nasty.
Long story short, we were able to get the truck to the shop for repairs and I spent the rest of the day driving a backup truck.

Pumpkins and berries

A short series from last weekend in Lake City. We headed for Grandma and Grandpa's for my birthday weekend, which was kind of the last free weekend before a busy October.