TRANSCRIPT

Interview with Bob Arkell of Arkell Foods - Bob Describes the Original Factory

See our plant when we started was only one hundred by fifty in Grimsby and it was on eighteen acres of property owned by Mr. Lake, well it was previously owned by Mr. Lake. Dad bought that. There were cherries on it and there were grapes on it. But we managed to get enough together. We had many ups and downs in life, I'm not saying that what we are going through today is not anything different than what we went through years ago, as far as the times are concerned. We started out building in 1945 a fifty by one hundred, and we had mostly outdoor workings at the time, machinery wise. And that had canopies over top. Sort of lean-to's and things. There was no winter work, it was all in the seasonal in the summer. We started in rhubarb, asparagus, then strawberries, then raspberries, cherries, peaches, plums, pears and then that was it, pretty well, that was your season.