The Pickle Men of Dassel

By Bill Ward 

On a Saturday afternoon in late February, 1916, the Dassel Auditorium was jammed to the doors. It wasn’t a dance or a ball game that attracted the huge crowd. These were all farmers arriving to pick up their pickle seed for the 1916 growing season and hear a talk from a representative of the Gedney Pickle Company.

Nearly all of these farmers either had contracts or planned to sign up at the meeting. In the end about 250 acres of pickles were collectively under contract with Dassel area farmers. This new area crop was anticipated to yield about $20,000 in total revenue for the community’s economy.

The pickle, or cucumber, was not a new crop. In fact it is mentioned in several verses in the Bible, even by Jesus himself. It just took a long and weaving road getting to the point of being a commercial crop in the Dassel area. The idea of a Minnesota pickle company was the result of the mid-life career change of Matthias Gedney. Mr. Gedney was an adventurer in early life, spending time on merchant and navy vessels before joining the California Gold Rush in 1849. He took his gold money and started a trading business in California, then eventually moved back to Illinois where he worked for two different pickle companies.

In 1879 Gedney decided he was ready to start his own pickle business, moving to Minneapolis and commencing the search for local farmers willing to raise his pickles. The farmers of Dassel eventually joined that throng of pickle growers, reaping good benefits from their efforts.

While the pickle crop of Dassel has long since moved away, there may yet remain a little inherited wealth in a bank here or there that has its roots in the California Gold Rush and the odd dream of an adventurer to become the tycoon of the Minnesota pickle industry. Who remembers today that Dassel was once proudly producing fruit to share with the rest of the nation? (Yes, the pickle is a fruit.)

Photo © Gedney Foods Company All rights reserved.