Big Shev’s Pickles

Coming Soon!!!

Jim Pelis-This recipe was handed down to me from my great grandmothers and from their grandmothers in the old country of Poland. The recipe has been in our family for over 130 years. My grandparents brought it with them when they immigrated to America in the 1890s. I recall our counters covered in these jars during the cucumber harvest in Hatfield, MA during the Summer. My brother and I brought home most of the cucumbers as a perk from our Summer job picking cukes on a “Polish Airplane”.(the nickname that locals used to refer to the apparatus used to pick cukes) Some were given out to family friends, others were stored in our cold cellar to enjoy for months. This recipe conjures up memories of family parties during the Summer. My parents and their siblings had a side hustle growing tobacco in the Connecticut River Valley. On the weekends my cousins, uncles, aunts and family friends would help each other out and work the fields. It all culminated with hanging the tobacco at the end of the Summer. It’s how I learned to drive on a Farmall Super MD at age 12. Kids weren’t strong enough to lift the lath holding 5 tobacco plants onto the rack or up into the eves of the barn. So our job was to drive the tractors and racks from the field to the barn where it was hung to dry. Those weekend farming sessions were followed by family parties. The gatherings included “whacky tacky juice”(vodka and ice tea), hot dogs, hamburgers and these pickles. 

A lifetime of Summers is in this jar. 

Na Zdrowie!