Apr 7, 2007

Swanson pickles millions of cukes

A quart of dill pickles doesn’t sit in the refrigerator very long in most households.

“People have a natural craving for that salty, sour taste,” said John Swanson. “Even kids love pickles. They’re a great snack that fills you up without sugar.”

Swanson isn’t worried about a shortage of pickles, however. On his family’s farm near Ravenna, Mich., this harvest season will fill 1,300 fiberglass vats with about 1.1 million bushels of cucumbers and acidy, salt-water brine. At 900 bushels per vat, and 24 quarts of dill pickles per bushel, Swanson Pickle Co. is doing its share to keep pickle chips and relish on the nation’s hamburgers and hot dogs.

Swanson Pickle Co. has grown over the years. It’s a family corporation that recently hired Katherine Swanson, 23, making it four generations for the pickling family. John is president. Brothers Paul and David, who are also owners, work for the company but don’t have official titles as officers. Father Donald is chairman of the board.

Grandfather Wesley started the business in the 1950s as a cucumber buyer and processor, John said. Donald diversified the company in 1980, integrating backward into farming. Today, the farm grows 1,500 acres of cucumbers that will be once-over, machine harvested.

Yields average about 200 bushels per acre, John said.

“In the last few years, our growing operation has stayed about the same size and our growth has been in the processing side,” he said. “We brine cucumbers for Dean Foods and do all the sorting and sizing for Heinz cucumbers from growers in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio. We brine and ship for them, and their growers get paid on our grade.”

Processing

A new, modern grading and sorting shed is central to the operation.

As cucumbers come in on semi-trucks, they cross a scale at the office and move to the plant, where they are dumped into water. The cukes are conveyed to sorting lines, where they are sized by length and diameter. The two profitable sizes are between 1-3/8 and 1-3/4 inches in diameter.

People on the sorting line remove broken or crooked cucumbers and trash like corn cobs left over from other crops in the rotation. The graded cucumbers go back onto trucks and then to the brining tanks.

Cucumbers today are made into three kinds of pickles, John said.

In fresh pack, cleaned fresh cucumbers are placed into containers, covered with a seasoned vinegar solution, vacuum-sealed, cooked and cooled. They have a shelf life of about 18 months.

Refrigerated cucumbers may contain some vinegar or acidification, but the entire fermentation process takes place under refrigeration. They are very crisp and maintain their fresh cucumber color. Refrigerated pickles have a fairly short shelf life, about eight months.

Processed pickles are what Swanson Pickle Co. makes. They are made from cucumbers placed in a solution of salt and water in large tanks, where they undergo full fermentation (“curing” or “preserving”). This process can take from four to six weeks. Pickles are then removed from tanks and shipped to companies that put them into containers with different seasonings to make various types of pickle products. They have a shelf life of two years or so.

While the brine solution is acidic, the fermentation process provides its own acid. Acidity needs to be measured and controlled, as does the salt content. The olive-colored brine, which is used and reused, needs to be monitored for enzymes that soften cucumbers, John said.

Cucumbers are moved in water or brine using pumps.

Production

At Swanson’s, cucumbers are planted for staged harvest. They have five mechanical harvesters of the style developed by Wilde and now manufactured by Jerry’s Welding, both nearby. Planting starts in late May and continues to July 25. About 10 percent of the earliest plantings will be replanted for a second crop the same year, John said. It takes about 50 days from planting to harvest.

Because cucumber size is critical to profitability, they are planted thick and most are irrigated immediately to assure uniform emergence, John said. The 70,000 seeds per acre only result in about 1.5 cucumbers per plant.

Planting is done eight rows at a time. The result is beds of four 18-inch rows separated by 30-inch spaces, and the harvester takes four rows at a time. The harvester the Swansons use cuts the plant at the root and elevates it to a roller bed where vines are pulled down and fruit is pinched off.

This works well for cucumbers of the size they grow, but can damage small ones. Most small cucumbers are hand-harvested and many are grown in India where hand labor is cheaper, John said.

The Swansons farm about 2,800 acres. Until a few years ago, they fed cattle to use the corn and hay they use in rotations. But in recent years, the growth of several multi-thousand-cow dairies in their area have altered the way they do things. They now sell forage and grain and keep no cattle of their own.

Cucumbers may be grown on the same ground from one to three years, John said. Cucumbers are always followed by a cover crop of broadcast wheat, which provides soil protection and other benefits that come from having living plants of a different species filling in between cucumber crops. Much of the wheat is harvested in the boot stage and chopped by the local dairies to make wheat silage.

“If we didn’t have this market, we’d have to kill the wheat with herbicides,” John said.

One additional benefit of working with the dairies is manure, which they need to dispose of and the Swansons like to use to improve soil fertility. After wheat, the ground is moldboard plowed for cucumbers or put into no-till corn.

With the growing threat of phytophthora, John said plowing and clean tillage may be important – and may have helped keep them free of the disease so far. Cull cucumbers are disposed of on fields that never are used for production.

“We’ve rotated forever, and we try to get as much organic matter into the soil as we can,” John said.

But no-tillage is not likely to become part of cucumber production.

“We need a firm soil with a little fluff over the top,” he said. “We use the plow, followed by a soil finisher, a cultipacker and a rolling harrow. With machine harvest, we have a 24-hour window for optimum harvest. Even germination is critical.”

John is a member of the board of the Michigan Vegetable Council, re-elected two years ago after six years off the board. He was on the board for nine years before taking the time off.

The Swanson operation employs about 20 people year round and another 30 seasonally.

“Much of our success comes from a solid core of people, some of whom have worked here more than 40 years,” John said.