"
Now Farmer Lukes went through the Beechams' acres, lifting the
beets loose by machine. Rose-Ellen could not believe they were
beets-great dirt-colored clods, they looked. Not at all like the
beets she knew.
Topping was a new job. With a long hooked knife the beet was
lifted and laid across the arm, and then, with a slash or two,
freed of its top. The children followed, gathering the beets
into great piles for Mr. Lukes's wagon to collect.
Vicente and Joe did not make piles; they topped; and Joe boasted
that he was faster than his father as he slashed away with the
topping knife.
"It looks like you'd cut yourself, holding it on your knee like
you do!" Grandma cried as she watched him one day.
"Not me!" bragged Joe. "Other kids does." The beet tops fell
away under his flashing knife.
From the beet-dump the beets were taken to the sugar factory a
few miles away, where they were made into shining white beet
sugar. ("And that's another thing I never even guessed!" thought
Rose-Ellen. "What hard work it takes to fill our sugar bowls!")
Sometimes at night now a skim of ice formed on the water bucket
in the chicken-house. Goldenrod and asters were puffs of white;
the harvest moon shone big and red at the skyline, across miles
of rolling farmland; crickets fiddled sleepily and long-tailed
magpies chattered.
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