Canning Circles - Safety First!

During the Great Depression it was common for people to get together to can up large amounts of food - many hands make light work. While the driving factor was simply a matter of survival, it had a really great side-effect of bringing communities together and forming bonds that would far outlive the economic troubles.

Today we find ourselves once again in the midst of economic troubles, and it may or may not be a coincidence that canning is becoming more-and-more popular. Just last week the New York Times newspaper did a feature article on this new trend - which is not really so new for many of us - that seems to be getting a lot of coverage in the alternative blogosphere. I think it would be a stretch to suggest that it is a matter of survival for most folks this time around, but I do think that people in general are becoming more concerned with their food chain, and are wanting to become more directly connected with it.

This is a good thing.

In the excellent book on home preserving Putting Food By, they talk about the resurgence in home canning in the 1970s, and the inevitable downside to that trend - an associated spike in sickness and death from improperly home-canned goods. Today it is recommended that if your recipes or techniques used in home canning pre-date 1990, that you really need to get a modern book and update your skills and recipes. So if you learned from your mom, dear auntie, grannie, or your wife's grandfather like where I learned how to make sauerkraut - then you really do need to update your skills for the safety of you and your family. Fortunately, there is a good free book available from the United States Department of Agriculture.

So I'm somewhat at odds with myself with regards to this new trend. I think it is really awesome to see people canning their own foods! I've been doing it for about 15 years now, and more-and-more with each year that passes! The past 8 years we've been in downtown Ottawa with a farmer's market at the end of our street, and every year we can up more-and-more local produce to help us make it through the winter. I think people need to have a connection with their food - I believe that the lack of this connection is a fundamental cause of the destruction we are wreaking on our planet. And I believe that if we fail as a society to reconnect with our food chain, then we are doomed.

On some of the websites I follow, I see talk all over the place about canning courses being offered in different cities across North America. This is good! As long as the person teaching the course makes it clear that nobody should come out of that course thinking they know everything they need to know about canning food. As long as the person teaching that course points out that the course is only a brief introduction to whet their appetite, and recommends that everyone read a good book on the topic in order to be sure they are doing it safely. For years now we've done canning circles here at our house in the fall - we always send the offer out to friends who may want to get together to can up some produce. In fact my Aikido Sensei comes by at the end of September every year to make our annual batch of fermented dill pickles! We are happy to organise our schedules with friends so that we can share our love of home canning, and hopefully infect a few of them with our passion in the process. But we always make it very clear that they need to read a good book if they want to do it themself.

Believe me, I'm not much of a book reader. I read on average about 1 per year. I'm not ashamed to admit it, nor am I by any means proud. So if I can read a good book on canning, anyone can. In fact I've read 2 or 3 of them, and 1 of them I've read several times - I re-read it every few years to make sure I have not forgotten anything important.

I'm really glad to see the increased interest in home canning. I just hope that this time around, people do it right, and do it safely.