The Wilmington morning star., 1947-07-20

all varieties Of pickles.: whole,
long-sliced, round : sliced. bread
and-butter, French. Dutch. Kosher,
and what will you. OF course,
sliced varieties require less time
Than whole pickles for the magic
formulas TO take effect. Bread-and-
butter, for example. can be un-
loaded from the trucks. graded.
washed, sliced, put to flavor for
four hours. packed, capped, past
eurlzed, and eaten from sun-up to
shutdown. Dills take overnight fer
the same results; sour pickles
shorter or longer periods. accrd-
ing to just how sour they are to
be to the customer.
In eithe-c case, the time-saving
factor is the pasteurizer, a 78-foot
conveyor belt which passes packed
and vacuum-sealed jars through
varying degrees of steam heat up
TO 120 degrees for %bread-and-
butter: higher and lower for other
varieties). and then cools. dries.
and delivers them to the packing
cases.
One difficulty Mt. Olive has
under control but far from solved
is the question of keeping warts on
cucumbers. In the immediate Mt.
Olive area, bumpy cukes are not
popular. . far from it. For fresh
consumption cukes are as slick
.utside as Uncle Harrv's bald
head. Growers love them for two
reasons: ID They are quickly
grown, a n d, rre important (2)
They will bring a never-predic-
table price or the acuction COM
mercial market.
The fact that the season, over
all income per farmer of COM
mercial cukes never equals the
contract income of pickle cukes
never faxes the cuke grower. For
he is a born gambler, and cukes,
one Of the quick. short season
crops among a half-dozen all
season, staple crops he can grow
on his sandy lcam, are the ideal
chips for his arriculural poker
game. He takes a trimming four
years out of five at the hands Of
Mother Nature and from those who
know selling markets better than
he, but re has his fun.
Mt. Olive tand other pickle
companies dotting the Carolina
coastal plain). of course, takes up
a bit Of that beating by going on
the market to round out contract
shortages. But, for the greater part
Of their pickles, they put under
contract cucumber-groWing acres
stretching from near the coast to
near the mountains in the rich,
temperate Piedmont Carolina hills.
For a quoted price per hundred
pounds, and under certain con-
revolving around the ability
If the planter to produce prime
oicxling cucumbers Cone of which
S the requirement of 4 laborers
Der acre of planted cucumba-s to
guarantee harvesting at pickli n g
ime), they contract to supply free
leeds Ito insure the Warts), a
.ertain amount of fertilizer, trans
,ortation Of the crop from gather
ng stations, and the purchase OF
II cucurnbers delivered in disable
ondition.
The truly amazing (and heart
ming to h e American a%pprecia-
ion of efficiency thing about the
tickle business is not the assembly
me pasteurizer producing 120-day
ickles overnight, but rather the
nipple fac that a six-Weeks crop
reduces work-jobs for a definite
lumber of people for all the twelve
aonths Of the year.
Of the three-quarter billion pick
IS produced at the Mt. Olive plant
ach year, only a quarter-billion
re used straight from the field at
arrest time. A nalf billion are
arked neatly in brine tanks cover
lg almos. two acres back of the
liant, safely and hygenically
in water, salt. and their
WI yeast to await the pleasure
f the pickle packing pasteurizer
lside. Taey are as fresh as Santa
laus time fact is, gift package
usiness is the neatest and one of
re biggest profits of the plant
S at June bride season.
There isn't any trick to it. The
God Lord put the yeast in GU
umbers: good pickle men have
to use it. . to make good
ial Q 2211 For NeWScaner GerVicA