Wheat & Beet

Saturday was the Annual Garland Wheat & Beet Celebration.  It is a very special holiday in which you celebrate beautifully flowing golden wheat fields that provide the grain of life, sustaining our very beings . . .  and beets (which honestly, who knows what they are for unless your last name is Schrute).

However, now that I have posted the deadly clothes staining vegetable picture, I think the Garland days are probably celebrating the sugar beet, which looks like this:

The other evidence that suggests this is the correct beet is the pile of concrete in Box Elder County that is now the welcome-home-missionary-graffiti wall, but still referred to by people like my husband as the "sugar factory."  

I better do some research . . . . 

Ok, I'm back.  I just found this courtesy of http://www.boxeldercounty.org/garland-history.htm

The sugar beet industry, which has its beginning through Napoleon Bonaparte in France in 1811 and spread to Utah through Mormon missionaries at the time of Brigham Young, had a tremendous impact on the growth of Garland.  In 1891, the Utah Sugar Company was established and a sugar beet factory was soon built in Garland which was in operation until about 1977 when the sugar beet industry declined.  

I vaguely remember from my Utah History class taught by the coolest professor every, Floyd O'neil, that this was also the basis for the community of Sugarhouse in Salt Lake City, but if I remember correctly, it was a failed industry and didn't last long (though the name did).

I better do some research again . . .

Ok, I'm back again.  I just found out, courtesty of http://www.utahstories.com/Story-of-Sugar-House.html,  that yes, the Sugar Beet industry did fail under Brigham Young's supervision in Sugarhouse, but Wilford Woodruff revived it later on and was able to make it slightly more successful.  The process started with Napoleon and involves vaccuum chambers to extract the sugar.  You can read more about that if you'd like.

So anyway . . . back to Wheat & Beat Days!!!

We went early.  Had breakfast.  Got cool yellow shirts.  Played at Grandma and Grandpa's.  Watched the parade and made quite a haul on the salt water taffy.  Played at Grandma and Grandpa's some more.  Then we left around 2:00 when Grandma and Grandpa had to leave to go to the temple.

It was a good day.  Here are some pictures that don't include beets.

Walking across the street to breakfast with Grandpa

Staring out the back screen door watching Chocolate run around

Watching the parade

Molly building "a train" with all of Grandpa's sprinkler parts

Grandma and Grandpas vast garden