Yes, I know what you're thinking, how could you miss it? As one of ALDC's newer members, I get frequent exhortations to start campaigning for my District Council seat as early as possible. However, there is more than one campaign taking place in Creeting St Peter. Let me explain...
Creeting St Peter is not exactly a hive of commerce. We do have a concrete factory of sorts, but it's mostly about farming. Oil-seed rape in the spring and early summer, wheat as autumn approaches and last but not least, sugar beet. Here, the sugar beet is still in the ground, awaiting the harvest. However, for reasons that, hitherto, have remained unclear, the period when the beet is harvested and transported to the sugar factory is called a campaign.
For locals, the campaign is a time when the roads are busy with big lorries, mostly heading for the enormous British Sugar factory next to the A14 at Bury St Edmunds. The lorries present an unusual hazard for drivers, in that an escaped sugar beet, falling off of a lorry, is a lethal projectile if your windscreen is in its path. Naturally, there are rules, in that the lorries have to have nets to secure their loads but that doesn't always work.
The campaign started in these parts in late-September, whilst we were in Bournemouth. And yet there still seem to be beet in the fields between the village and Stowmarket, and no signs of activity. Is there such a thing as winter beet?
No you haven't missed the campaign, it's in full flow. Unlike other crops beet continues to grow through the winter and the campaign will end sometime in late February. The factory at Bury St Edmunds will manage the intake of beet throughout the campaign and at sometime the field near you will be harvested and transported to the factory.
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