The 16th Annual Red River Valley Sugarbeet Museum Harvest Festival will be this weekend on Sunday, September 12, from 10:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Museum in Crookston. Admission for the event is free and will feature activities and events for those in attendance.
President of the Sugarbeet Museum Board of Directors Allan Dragseth talked about the origin of the event. “We started the Museum back in 2004, 17 years ago, and have had a Harvest Festival ever since,” said Dragseth. “Most years, we harvest beets with vintage equipment as well as wheat with a threshing machine. This year will just be doing Sugarbeets because we couldn’t find wheat tall enough due to the drought over the summer.”
The Harvest festival was canceled last year because of COVID-19, and the Sugarbeet Museum only had a tractor pull. There will once again be a tractor pull this year at 12:00 p.m., and the harvesting of the sugarbeets will begin at 11:00 a.m.
There will also be “people movers” available at the festival, and Dragseth explained more of what that means “The last two years we’ve gotten wagons from the UMC Research Farm, and they have benches on them for people to sit and watch the harvesting of the Sugarbeets,” said Dragseth. “We drive right alongside the Beet harvesters, and it’s especially valuable for older people like me who can’t walk in a rough field anymore.”
The event also honors a person or family every year, and this year it will honor the migrants who used to come up from Texas many years ago to thin the Beets and help harvest them. They are no longer needed; however, the Museum felt it was necessary to honor them for all their hard work over the past 50 years in helping keep the Sugarbeet Industry moving forward.
The Polk County Historical Society Museum will also be hosting their event “Pioneer Day” on September 12, beginning at 11:00 a.m. A free bus will run between the Historical Society Museum and Sugarbeet Museum throughout the day so that everyone can take in both events.
Dragseth talked more about the bus and the reason for it. “It will continuously be running back and forth between the two buildings all day,” said Dragseth. “We also have more parking available in our lot so people can park at our site and catch the bus to head over to the Polk County Museum, and then come back to our event.”
There will also be food available for those who want lunch. For years the Harvest Festival has had a pulled pork sandwich and potato salad meal. After not having the festival last year, they decided to switch things up, and they’ll be having a food truck serving Pulled Pork and a few other items. Admission is free, but the food truck will cost money for all who want to eat.
