Bietencampagne

That's what we called the campaign (harvest of sugar beets) tens of years. My father worked in a sugar factory more than 30 years. The campaign was always a special time. Not only because of the smell in the air and the loads of trucks driving through our village. Or the boats in the canals. But also because our father was working in shifts. He refused to work on Sundays, something he was successful in nearly 100%.
In the beginning he worked on a crane to unload the boats. Later he became a low level supervisor in the tare department. (By the way, I worked 3 months in the same factory. I had to enter the data his department gathered. Computers were not yet playing a major role.)
The sugar factories have mostly disappeared; the sugar beets are not driven to the factory straight away, but first gathered in rather big heaps. Sugar is nowadays more often made from sugar canes.