Why Canning Is Making Another Comeback
You're not too late for the food security movement.
The temperature change moving down the cold stairs, the cobwebs tangling your face when least expected, evidence of mice and the musty air enveloping you, all in search of homegrown red gold.
It was spaghetti night at grandmas, but you wouldn’t dare find a jar of Prego or Ragu on her shelves. Occasionally I helped can, or would sit at the counter snacking, as she processed jar after jar. No canning book or manual, just the wisdom passed down.
Watching her then, I would have never guessed I’d be standing in her very shoes years later. The canner passed down from my great-grandma to my grandma to now sitting on my kitchen stove most of the summer months. I guess it was inevitable.
I lived in the city for years, before moving to our farm with the intent of a small garden. It quickly grew into three gardens, a berry patch, a blueberry field, and a small orchard. As food production grew, so did my canning arsenal.
Farming or gardening, in any sense, go hand-in-hand with canning. It’s physically impossible to consume your entire bounty fresh. Canning preserves the flavors of summer for enjoyment throughout the brutal winter months. If you’ve never cracked open a jar of preserved peach salsa in a Michigan January, you haven’t lived.
However, this year looks different. As with any national event that threatens our livelihood, the art of canning has resurfaced. If you look back at news articles you’ll find around the recession in 2008, NPR reported on the canning comeback. Before our time, the technique was used through the Great Depression and World Wars.
Fast forward to today as we struggle through the 2020 Pandemic. There’s not only a surge in growing your own food but preserving it as well. So here we are yet again, with another canning comeback to report on.
Regardless of how you eat or where you source your food you can find security in food preservation.
So what does this mean for you? Security. Regardless of how you eat or where you source your food, you can find security in food preservation. Buy your fruit and veggies in bulk, eating what you wish fresh and canning the rest: pasta sauce, jams, relishes, meats, and even soups.
If you think crockpot cooking is easy, imagine coming home from a long day and cracking open a jar of homemade chili or soup ready to consume and packed with nutrition, instead of store-bought sodium.
While the government certainly has it’s handed in our food system, there’s a small rise in individual and communal efforts to take back control. If this step forward seems uncertain to you, look to your community first.
Growing your own food is a right, inherent to us all as human beings.
Often, local communities work to offer social support networks centered around food. This could include things like community gardens, kitchens, and farmers’ markets. Communal efforts often support the message that growing your own food is a right, inherent to us all as human beings. If growing your food is uncharted territory, but you’re willing to learn, these are your people.
For those in urban settings or rural communities lacking the community effort, this idea is not lost. As in individual, you can still seek to gain knowledge and develop skills to grow, prepare, or preserve your food.
Remember, you don’t have to start out doing it all. Begin where you find the most comfort. This could include participating in cooking classes, gardening workshops, or sourcing a few books. When the pandemic hit, universities dedicated to agriculture stepped up to offer inexpensive webinars in food preservation.
The pandemic continues to illuminate the cracks in our food system, including production, processing, distribution, and consumption. Canning is one small, affordable step towards ensuring you and your family has access to healthy food. Take food security into your own hands and join the canning comeback.
