Sugar beet

[Mike R]

I watched country file on TV yesterday I did not know that sugar beet was farmed in Norfolk on such a scale let a lone in the uk I thought it was mainly euope. So I have never collected any models associated with sugar beet.

Is there anything you dont collect like this ?

[MJB1]

i think the main reason people dont collect certain models is because it's more a case of not being relevent to what they do rather than what they know .

The other factor is the lack in recent years of available models good enough to represent what's being used , UH has bought out some reasonable sized kit like the grimme potato harvester , but it's by no means an uptodate model & siku bring out large euro kit thats rarely seen in the uk anyway i have the siku HOLMER beet harvester , but i've never seen one working round these parts, 6 row Matrot harvesters were about but beet acreage has all but gone , due to quota's & the closure of factories making haulage too expensive .

i remember standen rapide, cyclone , & turbo beets running in the winter months , i remember walking after the harvester with a beet knife & grouping rows & rows of beet the machine missed or was too wet to get near to be thrown into a trailer later that day.

Good old days ? pah , what was good about having freezing toes in your wellies , woolen gloves that were soaking wet , or rubber ones your fingers would freeze in , dressed up so much you could hardly bend & your back aching every night after pulling , trimming & loading by hand

would i do it again ..................yes because it was what i wanted to do..although knowing what i know now , i'd probably do it a little slower 

[Mike R]

thanks for your thoughts on Beet harvesting

[archbarch]

i missed countryfile, there is alot of Sugarbeet grown in Norfolk but i would say more is grown in the fens. Whenever we used to go into Norfolk the beet crops are a joke really in comparison, you can actually see between the rows.

[MJB1]

a bed system and harvested by a Standen turbo4 on a Ford 7610/ 7740.

i remember dillington farms having one of those , coupled to a bubble cabbed ford 7610 with front mounted topper  worked well , till the wet weather drew in , the beet & the soil sometimes became too heavy & the 76 struggled then

[nick a]

i lived in norfolk as a lad, norfolk /suffolk borders the farm shared sugar beet harvesting equipment. the crop was drilled with 12 row webb drill behind IH 584, the harvesting was by standen multi beet  two stage system . a pair of three row trailed toppers were used behind MF 135 tractors- the two multi beet lifters operated behind MF590 and JD2130 two wheel drive tractors respectively. Carting were MF1200 laterly MF1250, Ford 7600 & 7700, MF168 and JD 2130. Quite a lot of action when all the gang were in one field!.

[FB]

not much really around my way now either, maybe the odd field, i know there is a Standen harvester powered by a MF 595 i think locally?, must get Marky to investigate that one for an article?? ??? :) :)

other than that, really the biggest i've seen, harvestered by SP 6+ rows is out between Chatteris and March, on the back roads \ \ \

[IH885XLMAN]

there is a standen with a 3600 skid by me CXjoe will back me up on that

but when iver i pass it im on the shunt so i cant get to photosing it

could we have some old pics of the classic beet harvesters at work

maybee some potato harvesting aswell as we seem to be inundated with british cerials but not root harvesting as much be it fodder sugar potatoes more classic the better  ;) 

[Lord Ferguson]

Well I've got a couple of Standen Brochures... and I've just finished writing a feature on a 135 that's been rescued from a SoloBeet as well...

You'll just have to buy Classic Massey Magazine to read the story obviously...    PLUG PLUG 

[Lord Ferguson]

[MJB1]

that looks a joy to drive compared to the so called cab that was fabricated to fit them , , strange to see a 165 on ther as opposed to the usual 135 /3000/ 885 size units  i think the best was the DB / Case 90/94 series 2 row turbo beet machines , but i suppose 500  600 series MF units were used on them , although i don't know of any that went to the bother of removing the skid to use as a normal tractor

[Lord Ferguson]

Thats a 135 mate... on both of them I am pretty sure  \

[Tractorman810]

we were doing beet wheni was younger, stopped arround 1990 from memory as it wasnt cost effective by then, we had a trailer vicon i belive harvestor ,i remember it being a faded red colour almost pink, main reason i dont collect the current beet kit is its to new and big, if someone did a nice really detailed standen or amor salmon harvestor then i would be buying no worrys

[MJB1]

Thats a 135 mate... on both of them I am pretty sure  \

yup your right 

[PDC]

We have three sugarbeet factories here in East Anglia, Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk and Wissington and Cantly in Norfolk 

Bury has along campaign this season accepting loads from late September untill early March.

I think by the end of the season the local farms lorry drivers know their way to the factory

[BRITAINSMAD]

My father in law used to into this in a big way until the local factory closed down.  He does it now but just for fodder and nowhere near the scale he used to do it.  He just bought the equipment a couple of years before the factory closed so its all in good condition.

[archbarch]

i remember when i was a kid watching my grandad singling out fodder beet, so amazing to watch, to think all the beet had to be singled before the precision drill came along!!!!

[robbo]

i remember when i was a kid watching my grandad singling out fodder beet, so amazing to watch, to think all the beet had to be singled before the precision drill came along!!!!

One of my summer jobs in the early 70's was hoeing sugar beet, back breaking work though. There used to be a lot grown around the Selby area until the factory closed down, don't suppose there's much left around there now

[Lord Ferguson]

Is this is Mike .. I'm no expert on old methods but one of my friends told me this was someone 'thinning out' beet

[robbo]

That's the one Mark, used to get lines of men going across the field thinning and weeding, always have to stop at the end of each row for a ciggie though ;) . In between the rows was done with a tractor mounted cultivator but the rows them selves needed to be thinned and weeded by hand. It was also done for brassicas and similar veg, I am surprised you never saw it after all, there is quite a lot of veg grown near you.

I wish I had taken photos at the time but I didn't have a camera, I was only a poor student  :'( :'(

[jdc]

Oh dear, I can remember singling by hand. I twas a good day if there were four or five of you, but on your own like that pic it was a killer. 

We grew a lot of sugar beet and veg and in the 60s father bought a 'gapper' - 3 big scalloped steel wheels mounted at an angle to the rows which moved the soil in 4" blocks and left the plants in the scallops. It was OK if all the seeds sown had germinated.

We stopped growing when the sugar beet factory at Cupar in Fife closed in the 60s. Up until then we used to haul the beet to the station and tip them into railway wagons (basically the old 'coal wagons') for delivery. 

[nashmach]

Some nice Standen brochures there Mark

[IH885XLMAN]

yuo might want to put this in the "What would you like UH to make next" mods

but i would pay good money to have a standen solobeet harvester by UH  ;)

or the turbo, cyclone even a nice early rapide  with or without holding tanker

[ploughmaster]

Is this is Mike .. I'm no expert on old methods but one of my friends told me this was someone 'thinning out' beet

That looks very like it 

Thank God for monogerm seed!  For those who not familiar with beet, the beet family normally produce multigerm seed - really a fruit or cluster of seeds all stuck together.  This results in several plants growing from one fruit. 

Years ago the number of seeds could be reduced by a rubbing process which broke the clusters up a bit, but you would still get multiple plants from each 'seed'.  The advent of the precision drill meant that you no longer had a long line of closely spaced beet plants, but had clusters at intervals which still had to be 'singled' by hand.

Then in the late 60's, along came monogerm seed (in the shape of Monohill from Hilleshog and then Sharpe's Klein Monobeet) which produced single seeds and removed the need for hand singling.