Vegetables and How I Cook Them: Cucumbers

My earliest memories of cucumbers are of sitting in the back of a five-ton wagon being pulled behind a combine tractor, with pickling cucumbers flowing off a conveyor belt into the wagon.

The vines and leaves separated and rolled into the field rows. My sisters and I had the job of sitting in the wagon and sorting the cucumbers as they fell, throwing out any that were broken or the wrong size or shape.

This is one of those jobs that felt very important—I was the final quality check before the wagon (one of a three-wagon-long chain) was driven to the pickle processing plant for delivery. It is also one of those jobs that, as I look back on it, I truly have no idea if it was actually helpful or a way to keep us occupied as the real work took place.