Growers fight freezing temps to try and complete sugarbeet harvest

WORLAND - With Wyoming Sugar harvest at 80% Saturday and a nasty cold front forecasted, growers lent a helping hand.

Wyoming Sugar CEO and President Mike Greear said several growers who had completed their harvest lent labor and equipment to other growers to help them finish their harvest.

Greear said neighbor helping neighbor is what the growers here are always inclined to do. He added, however, that as a cooperative, every ton harvested helps everybody" within the Wyoming Sugar cooperative.

Mother Nature has not been kind to area sugarbeet growers this fall and not just with the single digits that hit early this week, but it started with an early freeze around Oct. 10 that damaged some beets.

Greear said this fall's weather has been a "big factor on this year's harvest."

He said when the freeze hit on Oct. 10 the company suspended harvest. Greear said, "We brought in beets for a few days where we fresh sliced them. So the frozen beets came directly into the factory. They processed fine."

Greear said the sugarbeets healed themselves after the freeze after temperatures warmed back up again. However, they did see some loss in sugar content. The beets at the start of the harvest were coming in at 18% sugar and after the freeze it dropped to 17.5%. With the latest cold front that moved through the area last weekend, content was at 17% on Sunday, Oct. 27.

The sugarbeets that healed were piled at the factory and Greear said they believe they will store fine. "Our experience shows that they will store, it's just a matter of how long," he said.

On Saturday, Wyoming Sugar was at 80% harvested.

"For the foreseeable future we are fresh slicing beets. We are bringing in beets, putting them on the ground and getting them sliced within three or four days before they go bad."

Greear said they will continue to monitor the beets and sugar content, noting that the goal is to get all acres in Fremont, Washakie, Big Horn and Park counties harvested, but if not they are hoping for at least 90% this year.

Greear said Fremont County is probably the farthest ahead at 90% harvested and Big Horn County, which had a wetter fall than other growers with a later start to the harvest, has been hit the hardest by the freezing temperatures.

"We're taking it one day at a time right now. What we've got on the ground right now is about four days of beets that need to be sliced," Greear said. He said they were taking a few more beets to put on the ground Monday and would begin fresh slicing and suspending harvest for part of this week.

Greear said with the last freeze the beets freeze damage as much as two inches into the crown. He said they are asking growers when topping the beets to scalp a little bit farther down.

Greear said they plan to get through this week and hope to harvest 4% to 5% more and then see what next week brings, adding that he has Nov. 13 circled on his calendar for harvest to be completed, hopeful it will be at 100%.

"As we sit here today we have a hope to get all the beets out. We have no reason to abandon any fields," Greear said. He said there was a field close to town a day after the Oct. 10 freeze and thought there was no way the beets would be harvested and 10 days later "they had really healed up well. I was shocked."

He added, "We're not in great shape, but we're not in terrible shape either."