Annandale's
Gedney Salting Station
Presentation to
the Annandale History Club
February 6,
2017
Garry Elfstrand
Gary Elfstrand’s great-great-grandfather, Aaron Elfstrand, was manager of the Gedney salting station in Annandale for many years. The Annandale History Club secretary compiled the following information.
The following Annandale Advocate article tells about the salting or
pickling station in Annandale.
Annandale
Pickle Past Brought Back By Water Leak
By Dirk DeYoung
A piece of history put the city of Annandale’s
maintenance crew in a bit of a pickle recently, but it ended up solving a
mystery.
The mystery was what happened to a city water pipe
running to the site of the M.A. Gedney pickle salting station the pickle plant
used to be fairly close to where the Holiday Station Store is now.
“We’ve looked for [the pipe] in the past, but have
never been able to find it,” McNellis said. “It’s always been kind of a running
joke.”
But then water started appearing across Hwy. 55 from
the Thayer Hotel a few weeks ago, and it was apparent there was an underground
leak. The maintenance crew dug down and found the lead pipe, which had been
sealed by being pinched, folded over a couple times, then wired together. It had
corroded, starting the leak.
The city maintenance crew
properly capped the pipe and filled the hole about a day after the leak was
found, McNellis said. The
mystery had been solved.
Few people remember anything about the pickle
factory, much less that it even existed. The proof is on a 1922 map of Annandale
hanging on the wall at City Hall, right inside the front door.
Thorene Aronson remembers. Her father, Aaron
Elfstrand, managed the factory for several years. It was opened in the late
summer and fall when the farmers would bring in their cucumber harvest, she
said.
Occasionally on of the Gedney brothers would come
out and look over the plant, Aronson recalled.
Her father employed sorting and loading crews,
including someone that would write the checks for the farmers who delivered the
cucumbers, she said.
“[The cucumbers] were sorted out on a slow-moving
belt by three or four girls,” Aronson recalled.
On that crew for a
number of years were two of Marion
Ponsford’s sisters, who sorted the cucumbers before they were soaked in a brine
inside big wooden barrels. Ponsford still lives in Annandale.
After the cucumbers were sorted, they were placed in
big barrels and laid on their sides. Then a hole was opened on the top, where a
salty foam would rise out. The barrels were eventually sealed and sent by rail
to Minneapolis for further processing.
Ponsford, herself, was too young to work there at
the time. “Us kids used to go down there and play a lot,” she said, explaining
that children would play in huge salt bins.
Also, the pickles that were too big to be sent away
for sale were put into large barrels, from which kids could grab an afternoon
snack, Ponsford said.
“Gedney pickles were the best pickles around,” she
remarked.
But W.D. Tobin, of Annandale, said that he and his
friends thought the pickles tasted better when they would steal them. They would
sneak in the site at night and take the pickles out of the holes in the barrels,
Tobin said.
“We’d prod them with a stick and try to turn them
around to get the pickles out of there,” he remarked, adding that he and his
friends would do this three or four times a season.
Annandale lawyer Nobel Shadduck also has childhood
memories of the pickle station. “I used to sell pickles there,” he said.
Shadduck said he remembers having to turn over all
the leaves on the plants to find cucumbers small enough to be acceptable at the
station.
Cucumbers less than four-and-a-half-inches long
earned the most money, followed by those up to six-inches long. Big cucumbers
were not acceptable and didn’t sell for anything, Shadduck said.
“It was a kid’s job,” he remarked, adding that he
didn’t think he ever earned more than $1 a week picking future pickles.
Harold Jones remembers three or four big round steel
tanks across from what is now the Thayer Hotel. When the pickle factory closed,
he hauled the tanks to the dump, then hauled them again for a farmer who wanted
to use them. But Jones is not sure when that was. He does remember, however,
that the factory was in Annandale when he moved to the area in 1918.
Shadduck said the station was around during the
early teens.
Mayor Lawler said he never saw the pickle station.
However, kids talked about it in his school after his family moved to the
Annandale area, so he guesses the factory was closed in the late 1930s.
But to confuse matters
further, Gedney Tuttle, current president of the M.A. Gedney Pickle Company in
Chaska, said he has no record of a company plant in Annandale. There were
stations in Eden Valley, Kimball, and Watkins, Tuttle said. “There may well have
been a station in Annandale.”
[end article]
GEDNEY SALTING STATIONS
Gedney was founded in 1880 on Lowry Avenue in north
Minneapolis. Local growers brought
cucumbers to the plant. At the end of
the century, there wasn’t enough space to store enough barrels of pickles to
last until the next season. Also
farms near the company’s Minneapolis plant were being replaced by
residential and industrial development
and long distances discouraged farmers from bringing cukes into the plant in
horse-drawn wagons. The company
began building branches in various rural Minnesota towns on rail lines with
farms close enough to make growing cucumbers economically attractive.
It wasn’t long before all the company’s cucumbers were being supplied by
farms near towns long distances from its plant in Minneapolis.
Gedney selected a particular variety of seed to be planted
by all of its growers. The seeds
were planted in late May and harvested from mid-July until late August or early
September. Picking cucumbers was a
back-breaking job for adults.
Cucumbers were often picked by children on plots of less than an acre on each
farm. There were many, many local
growers near Annandale.
BRINING OR
SALTING STATIONS: These branches
were called salting stations. Each
salting station was equipped with ten to twelve tanks with a capacity of 80-110
barrels of cucumbers apiece. Each
day, after the cucumbers had been graded, they were put into these tanks
according to size along with enough salt water to cover the cucumbers.
The brine pickled the cucumbers in a
state of permanent preservation.
This cucumber procurement and preservation system reached
its peak in the 1940s and 1950s. It
was a demanding job, requiring attention almost 24 hours a day during the intake
season of mid-July through August.
By the late 1960s the number of stations, which numbered 50 over the years,
shrank to seven or eight. Reasons
for station closures included fewer growers in an area and the popularity of
fresh pack pickles, which resulted in brining being discontinued at many of the
salting stations. These in turn
became intake-only stations with green stock being picked up by semitrailers
every night and brought to Chaska.
Also, the invention of mechanized picking devices and the availability of
migrant workers after the sugar beet harvest made it possible to contract for
much larger acreages with fewer growers.
At one time there were salting stations in Annandale,
Kimball, Eden Valley, Dassel, Cokato, Willmar, Lake Lillian and Silver Lake.
The salting stations were near the railroad tracks.
In the 1930s truckers started transporting the pickles to the Gedney
plant.
ANNANDALE –
Circa 1916 to 1932
The cucumber collection and brining station in Annandale is
thought to have started circa 1916 and closed in 1932.
Hopefully, the exact dates of operation will be found someday.
The ideal length of the cucumbers was under 4 ½ inches.
When the brining process was completed, the cucumbers were rinsed and
loaded in barrels for delivery to the Gedney plant in Minneapolis or Chaska.
For many years, Aaron Elfstrand (1864-1944) was manager of
the Gedney pickling station in Annandale.
Elfstrand also represented the company in different parts of the state as
a “pickle” buyer and in sales. The pickling station was open in late summer and
fall. Elfstrand hired sorting and
loading crews and someone to write the checks for farmers who delivered the
cucumbers. The farmers waited for
their cukes to be sorted and graded.
The cukes were sorted on a slow-moving belt by three or four girls.
COKATO – 1916 to
1918
Cokato
Enterprise, August 3, 1916:
Pickle factory running: The local
pickle salting station of the M.A.
Gedney Company of Minneapolis opened last week, with C.C. Erickson in
charge. Pickles are coming in
slowly owing to the warm, dry weather now prevailing.
August 31, 1916:
The M.A. Gedney company have this week had a well dug near the factory.
The work was done by John Hammerlun.
The new sign over the local ‘pickle factory’ states that the Cokato
station is No. 34 on the company’s list.”
March 1,
1917:
Pickle acreage said to be small:
Whether the farmers around Cokato will raise cucumbers for the M.A.
Gedney Co. pickle salting station this year is said to be very much of a
question. It is reported that a
representative has been able to sign up less than half a dozen contracts to
date.
May 3, 1917:
The M.A. Gedney Co. has contracted for the output of 90 acres of
cucumbers for its salting station in Cokato.
The company had a crew here recently removing the outside tanks as those
inside the shed should accommodate the acreage contracted.
The Gedney factory in Cokato was a short-lived venture.
The Cokato Enterprise reported it opened in the summer of 1916 and closed
after the 1918 pack. The structure
was torn down in 1922.
DASSEL – 1916 to
Unknown
Dassel Anchor:
April 6, 1916: The
Gedney Pickle Company announced plans to construct a new pickle shed next to the
railroad tracks across from the auditorium.
The shed will be much like those at other stations, and can hardly be
called a “thing of beauty, nor a joy forever.”
June 23, 1916:
Work on the new pickle sheds began last week and is being rushed in rapid
manner by a large crew of carpenters.
It is said that they will be painted white.
July 6, 1916:
H.P. Daily of the M.A. Gedney Company, pickle manufacturers, states that
the outlook at present is most favorable for an excellent cucumber yield.
The hundreds of fields are growing rapidly.
The company shed has been erected and is ready for service, awaiting the
arrival of the first load of cukes.
July 27, 1916:
The Gedney Pickle plant in Dassel is ready for the immense crop of
cucumbers that will come in this season.
The plant is one of the largest and best equipped to be built by the
company. The plant will be in the
charge of Ben Lawson, assisted by Miss Rachel DeLong, Earl Olson, and Ade
Wreisner, plus a dozen to 15 girls working as sorters.
August 24, 1916:
Pickles are everywhere: With day
and night crews working at full capacity, it was impossible to make any sort of
headway in keeping up with load after load hauled in by farmers.
Many local businesses and others are turning out in the evening and
lending a hand.
September 28, 1916:
It is likely that nearly 40 carloads of pickles will be shipped from the
local salting station as a result of this season’s run.
November 16, 1916:
Dassel pickle growers are to receive $1.80 a hundred pounds next year.
Prices will be increased all around, it is said.
KIMBALL – Circa
1916 to 1947
There were two large wooden barrels or tanks with a catwalk
on top until 1948. The Gedney
station was near the railroad tracks where the quonset hut now stands.
Tri-County News, July 22, 1937:
“W.T. Walters, manager of the local pickle factory informs us the factory is
open for business.
Date unknown:
M.A. Gedney opened a salting station during the pickle season through
1947. The familiar old “pickle
factory,” as it was generally referred to with its huge vats, was torn down and
removed in 1948.
SILVER LAKE
– 1956 to Circa 1969
Silver Lake
Leader, March 6, 2014: “LOCAL CUCUMBER GROWING ALSO PRODUCED GOOD INCOME
FOR COMMUNITY IN 1950S AND ‘60S -- Ray Paggen was hired in 1956 to manage the
Gedney buying station in Silver Lake.
About 120 families signed contracts to grow exclusively for Gedney.
There were also stations in Lake Lillian, Willmar, and Eden Valley.”
GEDNEY PICKLING
COMPANY
Gedney Pickling Company was founded in 1880 by Mathias
Anderson Gedney (1822-1925), originally from New Jersey.
He first got interested in pickles in
1863 when he moved to Illinois and began working for Northwestern Pickle Works
near Evanston. He left there in
1874 to join S.M. Dingie & Company, a pickle company in Chicago.
In 1879 he decided to found his own company, moving to Minneapolis where
he searched for local farmers willing to grow cucumbers, a semi-tropical vine
fruit not yet introduced to the state. Cucumbers require a long and warm growing
season, and Minnesota winters were thought to be too long and too cold.
In 1880, he founded M.A. Gedney Pickling Company with two
of his five sons, Charles Bailey Gedney and John Parker Gedney.
The first factory opened in 1881 on Lowry Avenue in North Minneapolis.
Two other sons, Isadore Vallies and Henry Edwin, joined the company.
The company was incorporated in 1888.
By 1893, factories were established in Minneapolis, St.
Paul and Chaska; Omaha and Kearney , Nebraska; and Mauston, Wisconsin.
Expanded railway service ended the need for these local branches.
All Gedney factories outside of Minnesota were closed.
In 1958, all pickle processing moved to Chaska.
Mathias Gedney passed away in 1925, and youngest son,
Isadore Vallies, succeeded him as head of the company.
In 1945 Isadore’s son-in-law, Harry Augustus Tuttle II, succeeded him.
Harry Tuttles’s son, Gedney Tuttle (1927-2014), took over in 1967,
followed by his son, Jeffrey Tuttle, in 1997.
Gedney Tuttle retired as CEO in 1998.
In 2009, Gedney Tuttle wrote a book about the history of the Gedney
Company, titled “The Minnesota Pickle.”
Other family members worked in the company or held key positions.
The company began the State Fair Pickle line in 1994, with
Minnesota State Fair pickle recipe contests.
In 2002 Gedney began producing pickles for the Del Monte and Target
Archer Farms brands.
In 2009, the company was sold to a California company
called PMC Global, Inc, but still produces pickles in Chaska under the Gedney
name as well as Del Monte and Cains.
Notes by Annandale History Club Secretary