In a Pickle: A Family Farm Story

by Jerry Apps

Overview

The year is 1955. Andy Meyer, a young farmer, manages the pickle factory in Link Lake, a rural town where the farms are small, the conversation is meandering, and the feeling is distinctly Midwestern. Workers sort, weigh, and dump cucumbers into huge vats where the pickles cure, providing a livelihood to local farmers. But the H. H. Harlow Pickle Company has appeared in town, using heavy-handed tactics to force family farmers to either farm the Harlow way or lose their biggest customer—and, possibly, their land. Andy, himself the owner of a half-acre pickle patch, works part-time for the Harlow Company, a conflict that places him between the family farm and the big corporation. As he sees how Harlow begins to change the rural community and the lives of its people, Andy must make personal, ethical, and life-changing decisions.
 
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians, and Outstanding Book, selected by the Public Library Association
   

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299223045
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	05/13/2008
Edition description:	1
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jerry Apps, born and raised on a Wisconsin farm, is professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of more than fifteen books, many of them on rural history and country life. His nonfiction books include Every Farm Tells a Story, Country Wisdom, When Chores Were Done, Humor from the Country, Country Ways and Country Days, One-Room Country Schools, Cheese, Breweries of Wisconsin,and Ringlingville USA. He is also the author of the historical novel The Travels of Increase Joseph. He received the 2007 Major Achievement Award from the Council for Wisconsin Writers.

Editorial Reviews

In a Pickle is a many-layered pleasure delivered by a master craftsman who is also, like Studs Terkel and Howard Zinn, a passionate student of the people’s history. As Apps engages us in the coming-of-age saga of the pickle factory manager Andy Meyer, this is at once a lesson in rural Wisconsin sociology, a quietly scathing indictment of factory farming, and a great read.”—John Galligan, author of The Nail Knot and The Blood Knot


“In a Pickle tells this poignant story of change, family, and heartache in a nostalgic, yet unforgettable way.”—Oscar Mireles, editor of I Didn’t Know There Were Latinos in Wisconsin


“In 1955, life on the nation’s traditional small family farms was on a collision course with industrialization and technology. Small cheese factories were closing, combines were replacing the threshing crew, and workhorses were put out to pasture. It also meant that farm families were facing the traumas of the future. Jerry Apps chronicles this dilemma of change through the lives of central Wisconsin farmers who existed by the sweat of their brows and the muscles in their arms. . . . In a Pickle is a story you’ll read with relish and remember forever.”—John Oncken, syndicated agriculture columnist and radio commentator

From the Publisher