The horses pull the V Sled down through the cleared areas. All the beets have been placed with the tails down pointing to the V and the horses are going through the cleared area to smooth it out.
The next step is topping the beets -- cutting off the green tops with a beet knife and putting them in a pile. I don't have a good picture of a beet knife, but maybe you can sort of see one in the next picture. They are wicked-looking. They have a hook in the top to hook the beet so that you can pick it up.
The young man in the white shirt in the front on the left has about the best view of the beet knife that I can show you. Try left clicking to enlarge the picture in the area of the knife if you want to look at it closer. You can see that they are piling them on the smooth area in piles for the next step.
This shows how the beets are then loaded using a pitchfork. They had to use a truck for this demonstration because they didn't have a wagon from that era and they actually didn't have a spare team to pull one!
Now . . . when you use a teaspoon of sugar next time . . . think of all the work that the old-timers had to go to to get that sugar produced!

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