The Red River Valley Sugar Beet Museum in Crookston will hold its 20th Annual Harvest Festival on Sunday, September 7, from 10:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. The public is invited, and admission is free.
The beet harvesting starts at 11:00 a.m. and the tractor pull begins at Noon. There will be old vintage machinery, including a Marbeet harvester and a John Deere. Barnyard Bites food truck will be serving up food throughout the event. “Come on out and you can enjoy a whole morning and afternoon time with the family and the kids and everything,” said Don Andringa of the RRV Sugar Beet Museum board. “There’s a lot of neat stuff, a lot of things on display, a lot of older farm machinery, everything from horse-drawn stuff all the way up to some of the newer stuff or some of the same technology as the newer stuff has.”
The tractor pull will have weigh-in at 10:00 a.m. “Last year, they had over 100 pulls, and they went till about 7:00 p.m. Many weight classes are participating. He’s got anything from 3,000 pounds up to 10,500 pounds, and different speeds,” said Andringa. “3 1⁄2 miles an hour, 6 miles an hour, and I’d like to see the 12-mile-an-hour ones go. So, they have anything, I think, 1975 and older, anything from grandpa’s old tractor to some very well-improved ones. He’s got a farm stock class, improved, super improved, turbo, and V8. So, he’s got quite a deal going. And he’s got what he says are jackpot classes for some extra spending cash for the guys.”
If you’re interested in participating in the tractor pull, call Jeremy Brault at 218-289-4393.
The beet harvesting will begin at 11:00 a.m. “We will harvest the beets with the old harvesters. We set up a bunch of them right across the front of the building and people can look at other old ones that we don’t use in the field,” said Alan Dragseth, Chairman of the RRV Sugar Beet Museum board. “And then inside we’ve got lots of displays, too, that people can walk through and look at on their own.”
The Red River Valley Sugarbeet Museum is located at the old Crookston Implement building on Fairfax Avenue and Highway 2. For more information, go to www.sugarbeetmuseum.com or call 218-280-8181.