#40 Harvest. 52 Ancestors
Agriculture roots are extensive in my family; maternal, paternal, husband, and in-laws. My life as well as my ancestor’s life has revolved around harvest. Harvest is where a family in agriculture is paid for the year’s worth of work as well as the money invested in a crop. And if the crop is poor, the money generated doesn’t pay the bills.
And what crops have the ancestors grown? I include livestock as a crop as the product of the factory are gathered and sold once a year. The factory might be cows or ewes or sows or does (goats). Families depend on that harvest for income. My ancestors (and my husband’s) have harvested cattle, sheep, wheat, corn, hay, pinto beans, sugarbeets, malting barley, canola, peas.
My current involvement this year in harvest is sugarbeets. Sugarbeets have been a crop for 4 generations of Gabel’s in Montana. It is a unique crop, high labor and high management crop. But a crop that a Germans from Russia excelled in growing.
We had the opportunity to attend a fall festival at the Legacy of the Plains museum in Scottsbluff, Nebraska in September. We were able to watch the digging (lifting) of the beets with mules, and the hand work involved in harvesting the crop. You had to want to grow sugar beets in that era but it was a cash crop and the Germans from Russia were used to hard work. We were able to see restored one row diggers in the field and Leroy was given the opportunity to dig with the international tractor and the one row International beet digger. It was a digger like his parents had when he grew up. In fact, the last year it was used was in 1972, 47 years ago! He was excited, but thankful that he could return to his 6 row digger!
Leroy's grandfather, Henry Gabel on a beet digger (lifter)
The digger lifted the sugar beets up out of the ground, one row at a time.
The men then pulled the beets from the row as they were "lifted" and put them in row
with the tops all pointing the same direction.
picture from the 1930's.
After the beets were laid in the windrow, they came back and topped the beets and laid them in a pile on a fresh dirt path that had been cleared by a team pulling a sled
After the beets were topped, the men used a "beet fork" and pitched them on the truck.
Henry Gabel with a loaded beet truck.
Notice the piles of beets
They were forked onto a truck
Leroy's Dad, Roy, on an International tractor with the one-row beet digger
1972
The last year the one row digger was used.
Leroy in Scottsbluff on an Farmall International Tractor with the International one row digger
September 2019
Today, digging with a 6 row digger
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