Sno Pac Foods offered frozen organic products before organic was cool – infum

Caledonia, Minnesota – While the frozen biological food market has developed over time, Sno Pac Foods Inc. returns in the first days of Frozen, when they started to experiment in the Second World War, said Pete Gengler, president of Sno Pac Foods Inc.

“Once upon a time, we were the only ones to do this,” said Gengler about the Biological Society Frozen Food.

The Gengler family operates approximately 2,000 acres of organic certified agricultural land to provide the company, which also collaborates with around thirty partner farms. Sno Pac Foods has a range of products of around 25 different frozen articles cultivated in the region, ranging from peas, green beans, eDamame, mukimame, beets, potatoes, cranberries and more.

Gengler’s great-grandfather grew up on his family’s farm in Caledonia and went to school to become an architect. He returned to his hometown in the early 1900s and started a wooden courtyard where he employed around 20 carpenters who built barns and other structures.

“He built a pond of ice made by man and a dike in an area that had springs on their farm, then started to obtain his crew in winter to harvest ice,” said Gengler. “They stored the ice in huge warehouses, which were all wrapped in sawdust, from the wood mill he had for his wood courtyard, and this is how we entered the refrigeration part of things.”

The family delivered door to door ice cream and even had a small rail spur that allowed them to transport ice by rail out of the pond.

In the 1930s, the Gengler family built a locker plant where they could freeze meat which they raised in their farms, and they also cultivated vegetables which they sent to an Onalaska, Wisconsin, Bear and Marine factory.

“Many farmers here at that time, in the 1930s and 40s, etc., pushed peas and green beans and things for this cannery that was there, and they would ship the raw product there,” said Gengler.

He said that the family had started to experiment more with refrigeration in the Second World War, while they were still doing a lot of slaughter in the region.

“They made a lot of chickens and turkeys that they cut in wings and thighs and so on, and wrap them in shaved ice that they obtained from the ice pond,” said Gengler. “This shaved ice was like snow, and that’s where the name Sno Pac comes from.”

Family vegetable affairs were all local at the time, Gengler said, until his grandfather begins to extend it.

“My grandfather was on the board of directors of Land O’lakes, and they built a factory in town here, and he directed a local butter route in the three states region,” said Gengler. “When they started making frozen vegetables, he took his frozen vegetables with O’Lakes terrestrial butter, distributing it at the time, mainly within 75 miles.”

Gengler said he has been working for the family business since he was a child.

“I was 5, 6 years old, working either by picking strawberries – when we had 20 strawberries – or working in the factory, leading the boiler – when at that time, we shoven coal in the boiler,” said Gengler.

Noah Fish / Agweek

About a decade after the Gengler de Caledonia High School diploma in the 1970s, he took over the family business.

A mega-popular CBS 60 minutes of history in 1989 on the dangers of Alar, a chemical pulverized on apples to regulate their growth and improve their color was what Gengler called a “shift” for the organic industry.

“After that, I have the impression that it was then that it started to switch to Organic, much more,” he said.

Fortunately for the family business, the Gengler family had always been organic.

“This is why we always say that we were organic before the organic was cool,” said Gengler.

Noah Fish / Agweek

The SNO PAC treatment installation is around 60,000 square feet. Gengler said it was probably the largest strictly organic processor in the state, producing 10 million pounds of products per year.

“We will start in May, probably treating soft potatoes and potatoes from storage that found themselves from last winter. In June, we are going to go with peas and green beans, edamame, mukimame, potatoes, carrots, beets, sweet potatoes,” said Gengler. “We continue from harvest to another until, generally, we finished with real treatment next fall, generally carried out by about a week before Thanksgiving.”

The high -end SNO PAC treatment equipment is able to go through around 8,000 pounds of radicular crops in about an hour, said Gengler.

All products go through a blocker before being frozen, which is crucial for preservation by deactivating the enzymes which cause flavors, color changes and a degradation of the texture during storage.

“If you have not whitewashed the product and you just threw it in the freezer, it will only be good for about six months before starting to lose its color, to remove flavors and so on,” said Gengler. “If you laundered it properly and freeze it, you can draw at least two years, if not more.”

Noah Fish / Agweek

In winter, Gengler said it was a question of reset to make the treatment cycle start again.

“In winter, we do the maintenance, of course, on all our harvesting equipment, agricultural equipment,” he said. “Make sure the bearings are good and things like that, but we are also packing all year round.”

By browsing the SNO PAC treatment installation, Gengler comes up against the longtime employee Logan Thiele who started working for the company just after obtaining his High School Caledonia diploma. Thiele has done everything, to work on the agricultural side of the company to work in the processing plant and to drive delivery trucks.

“I love working here, and I like the fact that everything is local,” said Thiele. “You do not see many patterns that come out their butts in play and work with you. (Pete Gengler) will do nothing that he will tell anyone else to do.”

At the Front Office, Gengler meets his sister, Joan, who makes Sno Pac sales and sales, and his brother, Nick, vice-president of the company.

Noah Fish / Agweek

“Things have changed a lot since we were small,” said Nick Gengler. “It’s nice to see where we started, using wooden equipment, where we are now.”

Over the past two years, Gengler has said that the region has been “too wet” for good production of many of their products.

“Organic vegetables cannot take wet time, such as regular soy or corn,” he said. “They have less deep roots and so on, and it is only a lower plant.”

He said the last growth season, a lot of damage was caused early with torrential rains.

“We couldn’t barely have things planted, then what we did, a large part of it drowned,” said Gengler. “The weather is probably our biggest challenge. The weather and the weeds.”

No year was worse than 2007, when the county of Houston felt the impact of more than 15 inches of rain in 24 hours.

“We had finished our peas and did green beans at the time,” said Gengler about the 2007 floods. “We lost all our remaining green beans, and EDAMAME has also suffered badly.”

They were able to bounce back next year with business, and Gengler said that being a farmer and managing a business means that you have to be optimistic for the future.

“This is how all farmers are,” he said. “They must be optimistic.”

Although the percentage that Sno Pac has of frozen biological industry is not what it was before, Gengler said that the company continues to grow at a reasonable rate.

“We still haven’t grown up,” said Gengler. “We are not trying to light the world on fire.”

Gengler’s two sons also work in Sno Pac with the sons of his brothers. The company will one day be in their hands, said Gengler.

“I cannot think of any of the genglers who are not interested,” he said.