The Sugar Beet Pile at Hillsboro

In the Red River Valley of North Dakota, the October sugar beet harvest never stops — the piling ground outside Hillsboro works through frost, fog, and dark.

Nell Sorensen 4 min read

5:40 a.m.

The sugar beet pile at the piling ground outside Hillsboro, North Dakota, steams in the dark of an October morning. Frost lies on the gravel pad and on the fenders of the trucks lined up along the road. A loader works the face of the pile with its bucket raised, knocking clods of frozen clay off the beets. The pile is built in long rows, dumped by trucks that back up a ramp and empty themselves in one fall. The beets near the surface are hard with frost; deeper in, the pile keeps the warmth of the day before. The steam comes off the seam where cold air meets that stored heat. The truck in front of the ramp finishes and pulls away, and the next one backs up over the same place.

7:15 a.m.

The sun comes up over the Minnesota side of the valley, flat and red through the fog hanging in the river bottoms. The line at the piling ground has grown. Trucks idle with their exhaust white in the cold. The scale house window is lit, and a man in a high-vis vest walks the low edge of the pile, checking the straw banked along it against the coming freeze. The crews in the field are already hooked to the defoliators. Along the gravel road the frost melts off the weeds. The closest truck to the gate has North Dakota plates and a cracked headlight.

The beet field at sunrise, fog in the bottoms

9:10 a.m.

Out in the fields the harvesters work against the damp. The beet tops are flailed off first and left in windrows for the cattle. Then the harvester lifts the beets, one row at a time, letting the clay fall back through the shaker pans. A truck waits at the field edge, takes the load, and carries it off in a cloud of dust down the road. The soil here is black and heavy and sticks to everything — the steps of the trucks, the boots of the men who climb them. The beets come out clean, pale, tapered at the root end, and in the hopper they look like river stones polished by the ground. The truck's wheels spin once on the headland, then catch. The load settles as the truck pulls onto the gravel.

Noon

The piling ground goes quiet for a short while. The loader sits idle against the face of the pile, and the men eat on tailgates with their cab doors open. The pile stands well above the cab heights now. The sun has burned the fog off; the fields lie flat in all directions, gray-brown stubble ending at the edge of the sky. The gravel pad is tracked with mud that dries white. A dog sleeps in the shade under the scale house. The only moving thing is a flag at a farmyard across the road, lifting and falling in a wind that comes and goes. The mud on the pad holds the shapes of truck tires.

2:45 p.m.

The trucks run again, faster now. The afternoon is warm for October, and the men work in shirt sleeves. The pile grows at the far end, where a stacker pushes beets up and over the lip of the face; beets roll down the slope and come to rest against the lower ones, carrying a drift of loose dirt with them. The men on the ground guide the trucks with red flags against the gray air. The gravel road is dust all afternoon. The harvesters move across the quarter sections at their own pace, leaving open furrows that look from a distance like the ribs of a field turned inside out. The light is flat. The shadows of the trucks lie long in the same direction.

The furrows left open, the fields flat to the edge of the sky

5:30 p.m.

The sun goes down behind the pile, and the floodlights come on before the day is gone. The pile throws a shadow across the gravel and up the bank of the ditch. The piling ground does not stop for the change of light. The trucks have their headlamps on, and the dust catches the beams. Out in the fields the harvesters show their work lights early. The air turns cold the way it does in October in the valley, and the men pull on jackets from the seats. The scale house window glows over the road. Steam rises again from the face of the pile in the floodlight. The floodlight at the corner of the pad hums over the sound of the idling trucks.

10:30 p.m.

The pile is the tallest thing on the horizon now, a black ridge against the dark. The trucks still come down the gravel road from the fields, one after another. The loader works the face, building the pile higher. The beets are cold to the touch and slick with damp soil. A man with a shovel walks the low edge of the pile, opening the drainage ditch where the water has pooled. Frost has returned to the windshields of the trucks in line. The piling ground hums — diesel engines, hydraulics, the ground itself carrying the weight of the trucks. The night is quiet in the fields, but here the work goes on, and each load pours over the top as the pile settles beneath it. The pile leans into the earthen berm at the far end of the pad.