Our Story

My first job was picking cherries.

While my older siblings spent their summers planting corn and hauling hay to sustain our Herefords and Black Angus through Northern Michigan’s long, hard winters, I worked with my younger siblings in the orchards near Atwood, Michigan, picking cherries.

We worked because we needed the money to buy shoes and school clothes. The kindly farmers paid us $1.00 per lug (about 4 cents a pound) – and that was a lot of money for a young girl in the ‘60’s.

We began our day bright and early by strapping on our buckets, walking into the lush orchards, and filling the buckets with sour cherries. Then we emptied each bucket into a “lug”, put our name on the lug, placed it in the shade, and went back for more. The farmers came by later to pick up the lugs and take them to the cherry plant.

Some days I picked three lugs; others, four; and on a really good day, I managed to harvest six lugs! Hence, our company’s name, “Six Lugs.”

I learned a lot about cherries. Even to this day I can quickly spot the “best of the best”, and I use them to make my special Cherry Vinaigrette.

This vinaigrette is good on everything! Try it on red leaf lettuce, on spinach, on cabbage, on tossed salads of all varieties. Just a few teaspoons of this one-of-a-kind dressing will make any salad burst with flavor. Your family and guests will eat it up, and ask for more!