The Pickle-Packers

Frank Sechler doesn’t dilly-dally at the family’s pickle-packing plant in St. Joe, Ind. (pop. 478). Heading straight for the pickle-sampling tray, the second-generation owner picks out a sweet dill and enjoys every crunch.

“I think our pickles taste better,” says Sechler, reaching for another sample. “And I say that modestly and truthfully.”

At 77, Sechler knows pickles. He grew up in the business, which his father started back in 1921 and now his 43-year-old son, Dave, is making his own mark at Sechler’s Fine Pickles.

“My son’s the one who coined the phrase, ‘We could make them faster, but we couldn’t make them better,’” Frank Sechler says proudly.

Frank’s father, Ralph, was born in 1894 in a log cabin, a mile down the road from the present pickle factory. He learned the business by working for others, then started his own in the small northeastern Indiana community. His wife, Anne, hand-packed pickles in jars in her kitchen, often with the help of neighbor ladies.

In 1930, the business outgrew the Sechler house. The barn was converted into a factory, after another home was found for the cow. The first steam for processing came from an old threshing machine boiler Anne Sechler had bought at a farm auction. Several years later, the contraption caused a fire that destroyed the barn-turned-pickle-plant.

A new facility was built, growing to more than 60,000 square feet, including the tank yard where pickles are stored in salt brine before processing. The old farmhouse where Anne once hand-packed pickles now serves as an office. From the genuine dill pickles that Ralph Sechler started with, the company has expanded to include gourmet treats such as raisin, apple cinnamon, orange, and lemon-flavored pickles.

For all the technical advances, many of Sechler’s processes have changed little, or not at all, over the years. Area farmers bring their freshly picked cucumbers straight from the fields, while the Sechlers grow many of the more specialized ingredients themselves, like jalapeno and hot Hungarian peppers. Candied varieties are still sweetened with pure cane or beet sugar, instead of less expensive corn syrup.

“No artificial colors are added,” Dave Sechler says. About 40 varieties of Sechler pickles are now sold in more than 15 states. A mail order business sells even more pickles, as attested to by an autographed photo of Frank Sinatra in the company gift and pickle-tasting shop. Twice a year the crooner would order Sechler’s candied dill strips.

Twenty-five full-time employees keep the company going, with part-timers added during peak production in July and August. “When they get to be a working age, kids out here know they have a summer job,” says Jan Weaver, who started working at Sechler’s as a teen and has been there 25 years. “It’s a good place to work.”

Now 69 years old, Opal Mason says she remembers well when Ralph Sechler found jobs for her and her sister Audrey after their father died in 1949. “We were just kids in school but he gave us work every Saturday so we could have some money,” she says.

Each August, the town honors the Sechler family by hosting the St. Joe Pickle Festival. The seventh annual event, scheduled Aug. 7-9, will feature a pickle and pepper cookoff contest, the pickle derby (pickles with wheels zoom down a wooden raceway), the pickle people competition (pickles are dressed up to look like people), and plenty of food—with pickles, of course.

“In his quiet way, Frank Sechler has been very charitable,” Mason says. “He’s not one to talk about it, but he has done quite a bit for St. Joe.”

Jackie Sheckler Finch is a freelance writer in Bloomington, Ind.

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