Michigan Sugar Company

dave and I spent the last three months at my parent’s cottage in Michigan. We decided to spend the winter here for two reasons. First after more then a year on the road both of us missed having a home base, somewhere we could call home for a while without moving to a new spot every day. Second we were about to run out of money. If the trip was to continue we needed to buckle down, find a job and earn some money. With the benefit of hindsight Michigan probably was not the best place to find a decent paying job. Due to the decline of the auto industries the economy is in bad shape and many people are out of work. That coupled with staying the winter in a summer community made the possibility of finding a job difficult. The sugar factory in Sebewaing (30 miles southwest) seemed like the perfect solution. They were hiring lots of seasonal help. We decided to take the orientation class and work for the company since none of the other places we applied had called us. At the orientation they told us all the seasonal jobs revolved around the beet harvest and would last about a month but if you proved you were a valuable employee there was a possibility of working in the factory full time through March. So it seemed like the perfect solution to our situation.

Sugar Factory

The Michigan Sugar Company was formed in 1906. It is the largest beet sugar (versus cane) processor east of the Mississippi River and the fourth largest in the United States. The Company became cooperatively owned in 2002 with approximately 1,250 sugarbeet growers and it employs 450 year-round and 1,750 seasonal employees. Michigan Sugar Company produces nearly one billion pounds of sugar annually under the Pioneer and Big Chief brand names - "Locally Grown. Locally Owned."

The farmers in the cooperative all harvest their beets at the same time of year so they need a lot of workers to help pile the beets till they will be used in the factory. While the beets are still in the ground the farmers cut the tops off the beets (they grow like a potato with their leaves above ground) and dig them up with large machinery. They are deposited into large dump trucks which bring them to the factory. The factory is on 80 acres, most of which is a large parking lot. Fifteen pilers were interspersed on the grounds. After getting weighed the trucks drove up to a piler and unloaded their beets. The pilers could accept beets on each side for more efficient unloading. After dumping the beets into the piler the beets were agitated until most of the dirt came off. Then the beets were spit out into HUGE piles and the dirt was put back into the trucks. As each truck left the yard it was weighed again. The farmers were paid for their beets based on weight and sugar content.

Sugar Beet Close Up with Top Attached

dave worked at one of the pilers with three other guys. One guy on each side would help guide the truck into the correct spot to dump. Another guy manned the controls of the machine and the last guy took random samples of beets for sugar content testing and swung the piler boom back and forth to create even piles. By the end of the month the entire 80 acres was covered with beet piles over 20 feet high. dave found out the hard way not to pile the beets higher then 20 feet. The beets need to breathe or they will start to rot before they can be brought into the factory for processing. If you pile them too high they can’t breathe and the yard supervisor will come over to give you an ass chewing.

Truck Dumping Beets into Piler

dave Next to his Pile of Beets

View of Yard from Top of Piler

My job was much different. I worked inside a small shack with about 12 other women. All of the random beet samples taken at the pilers were sent to the shack and ground down into sugarbeet juice. The juice was then sent to a lab and the sugar content was measured. The job was fairly labor intensive since we had to move the beet samples to different stations and many of the guys at the pilers paid no attention to the sample’s 25 pound weight limit. Instead we routinely moved, cleaned and cut up 40-50 pound bags of beets. You didn’t need a gym membership with this job. You got your workout at work!

Unloading the Beets into Buckets (The beets came to us in the green bags and we moved them to each station in the black buckets.)

Kathy Grinding the Dirt off the Beet (We had to wear hair nets to ensure we didn’t get our hair stuck in the grinding wheels like one girl did the year before. I thought it was awfully funny since I had hardly any hair. One lady called them our birth control since we looked so silly in them. Kathy is a wonderful woman who we hope to continue to hang out with.)

Beets Going into Saw (This saw routinely got clogged with beet parts. Instead of letting the ladies working there fix it we had to call in a man to do the work. Needless to say I had a major problem with this. I didn’t need a man to fix a simple problem nor did I appreciate having to stand around while he was paged and finally got his butt to the shack. Most of the other women smoked so they didn’t mind the breaks.)

Juicing the Beet Pulp into Sample Tubes (This was a rather tough job because the entire process could easily be held up by this last step. If the lady juicing didn’t go fast enough, we couldn’t pass the empty buckets back to the front of the line. Without buckets to put the beets into the process came to a grinding halt.)

The process seemed simple enough but it was far from scientifically accurate. We used the same funnel, gloves, vials and caps over and over again. During our five minutes of training (which was five minutes more then dave got outside), I asked if reusing the same instruments would skew the sugar content results. I was told not to worry. In the end this inaccuracy may have helped the farmers since the sugar crystals were obviously stuck inside the vials and probably gave higher readings. After working for a scientific organization like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service it took some getting used to a process so thoroughly inaccurate.

To make matters worse the supervisors both inside and outside provided very little training yet expected you to know what you were doing. In addition to this being unsafe, it was a daily occurrence to have someone screaming at you for messing up something you never knew how to do in the first place. Most people didn’t seem to mind and just let it roll off their backs. I on the other hand have never had a supervisor yell at me before and found the whole thing very demoralizing.

dave and I were rewarded for busting out butts at this job by working an extra week doing all the dirty work nobody else wanted to do. We didn’t mind since we thought this would allow us to work in the factory for the winter. So we scrapped all the dirt off the pilers, hauled all the dirt and mud out from under the scales and help install poles to measure the beet temperature throughout the winter. Yet in the end we didn’t get the factory job. I think it may go back to being in Michigan, too much competition for so few jobs. Couple that with the fact that we weren’t local and didn’t know any of the farmers.

On our last day the beets were still in piles outside. Since I was never inside the factory I can only speculate on what the process is to convert the beets into sugar. I think the beets are cut up and ground into a pulp. The pulp is then spread out and put in a dehydrator where the beet pulp is separated from the sugar crystals. There are a few byproducts to the process; lime, beet pulp, beet molasses and betaine. The lime is used as fertilizer for agricultural fields and is available for free at the factory to farmers and the public. The sugarbeet pulp is the fibrous vegetable matter of the sugarbeet which remains after the sugar has been extracted. It is further dehydrated and pressed into pellets which are sold as animal feed. It takes one ton of sugarbeets to produce 110 pounds of pulp pellets. According to the factory’s website “It has a high energy value, is a good source of protein, contains minerals that are essential for animal health and stimulates milk production. It is also highly digestible and can reduce digestive disturbances.” Beet molasses is the residual liquid left over from the sugar extraction process. It provides an excellent source of carbohydrates for poultry, turkey, and swine feeds. “Betaine functions as an osmo-protector and increases gut elasticity to prevent rupturing during processing. For plants, betaine reduces the freezing point when applied to the leaves of the plant and also functions as an osmo-protector during periods of stress.”

November 15 was our last day of work. dave was lucky enough to get a call from a tree service he applied to. Now he is busting his butt chipping, hauling and splitting wood for a measly $7/hour but it is more than I’m making. Instead I stay home every day working on our resumes, managing our budget spreadsheet, cleaning and hanging out with the dogs. It’s a rough life but some how I’m managing. Since we didn’t get the factory jobs and I don’t even have a job we won’t earn enough to travel next spring and summer. We decided we need to bite the bullet and start applying for federal jobs. We are undecided if we want seasonal or full time jobs so we are applying to both. As we’ve mentioned before we eventually want to get back to Michigan and settle in the Upper Peninsula (UP). dave applied to a seasonal fire job advertised at Seney National Wildlife Refuge in the central UP. Turns out the fire guy there did a two week detail to the Fish and Wildlife office I worked in at Fairbanks this past summer. As a result he knows dave’s previous supervisor. (I love these federal agencies. They are all small enough that everyone seems to know each other.) Long story short it turns out there aren’t any positions open at Seney Refuge but the fire guy there really wants dave to work fire in the UP. He gave dave the low down on what is happening with both the Fish and Wildlife Service and Forest Service fire programs and opportunities he should pursue.

Now we are back to the waiting game! We’ll keep you posted as we find out more.