October 17, 1936
THE STATE
Роде
Nine
There’s Money in Cucumbers
IllClt ITS one concern, for in¬
stance, Ilia! paid more Ilian
$33.000 lo farmers for I heir
cnciinihers Iasi year.
By SUSAN I DEN
BKCAI'SK two women bark in tin?
hills of Alamance County, in
the i*hl Quaker Hill community,
knew how to convert the cucumbers
from their garden into delicious pickles
half a century ago, farmers of the cu¬
cumber trucking districts of
К
astern
North Carolina had their pockets en¬
riched by more than .$33.000 in the
past year.
The craving for pickles, sour and
sweet, hot and dill, line to l>> satisfied
and Charles F. Cates, of the Cates
pickle factory in Faison, says there is
no such word ns depression in his busi¬
ness since the factory was moved from
the Swathmoor farm near Mchane in
1929 there has been n steadily grow¬
ing business.
Swathmoor pickles are decidedly a
North Carolina product, made in North
Carolina by a family that has been
native to the hills of Alamance for gen¬
erations. It was on the farm of his
father, the late II. M. Cates, in the
Quaker Hill community, that Mr.
Cates first started his venture. As a
bov lie had seen his mother and grand¬
mother salt cucumbers and sauerkraut,
sometimes selling the cucumbers in
brine, or the pickles at the mill in
Swcpsonville.
It was while lie was on the road sell¬
ing fancy groceries, after he finished
college, that he conceived the idea of
going into the pickle business. It is
amusing to Mr. Cates now— ajid al¬
most appalling to think of the temer¬
ity with which ho liegnn the business,
lie had almost no knowledge or expe¬
rience; a striking contrast to the train¬
ing which his son, A. I’. Cates, a grad¬
uate of State College, with four years
training in some of the big picklo fac-
Top — The three Cates: Charles F. in the center, his
brother H. R., on the left, and his son, A. P., on the right.
Below — A view of the Cates Pickle factory with a few of
the many brining vats in the foreground.
lories of t li e
N
о г
i h. h a s
brought to the
business. T h e
equipment in
those early «lays
consisted of some
big enamel pots
and several mo¬
lasses barrels
used for salting
cucumbers. In
spite of the mis¬
haps that came
from lack of ex¬
perience 50 bar¬
rels of cueum-
liers grown on
the Cates farm
were pickled that year and there was
courage to go on.
That small beginning was in 1898.
For a year or two Mr. Cates continued
traveling and then in 1904 he bought
a farm of about 300 acres on the edge
of Mehane, adding to it until there
were about 800 acres. The name,
Swathmoor, which became widely
known through the pickles, is a com¬
bination of Scotch words that means
a mown field.
One of the first things that Mr. Cates
did after deciding to go into the manu¬
facture of pickles was to make a trip
North to some of the big pickle fac¬
tories to try to find out how they did
things. Most of them closed the doors
of their pickling plants in his face
when they found out what lie wanted
Init in one or two factories ho was al¬
lowed to go through the plants. 1'sing
his eyes and cars for all they were
worth Mr. Cates stored up many val¬
uable suggestions and ideas on that
t rip to help him in his new venture.
At first the pickle manufacture was
confined to big sour pickles, such as
eonie dripping out of the barrel at the
corner grocery store. Later sweet
pickles and then relish or chow-chow
and dill pickles, onions and watermelon
rind sweet pickles and some other ex¬
periments were added.
As the business continued to grow
and the demand for pickles increased
Mr. Cates found difficulty on the
Mchane farm in supplying the demand
for young cueuinbers. The farmers of
that section are not truckers and could
not he depended upon for the proper
picking of the cucumbers when they
are just right for pickling. It was
decided then to move the plant to
Faison in Duplin County in the midst
of the trucking area particularly suit¬
ed for the growing of eucumls-rs.
In
1921»
tin- business wn- ineorpo
rated as Charles F. Cates and Sons and
( Continued on page tixlr.n
