Yes, I agree that home canning is on the rise. Its due to many things, but mostly by the poor economy and recession. The local supermarket here has canning jars in most sizes as well as lids and rings. Usually these are either only seasonal or are not carried. Lets just hope that the suppliers keep more stock of the needed jars and products like pectin, canning salt, pickle mixes and many other items. Just in the last two months, we have seen many new people signing on here too. Its nice to know that we have been surviving all this time, and more home canning will be able to share in our knowledge.

ken you could be right but I was surprised to learn that the Christmas sales were down only 4% from last year. I think it might have to do also with the green movement and the push for more organics. I think a lot of people who were just gardeners before are growing veggies now. Maybe there will be another "Back to Earth" movement.

Just wanted to mention too...a lot of the "womens" magazines like Martha's and Oprah's and Good Housekeeping etc etc have been running articles on making your on jams and perserves. I think it is so funny that they stick a fancy name on it and walk you through the recipe and making of it and when you finish the article you think...well I've been making jelly/jam my whole life.

I sell jam and pickles, fresh produce and fruits, and the like, at the local farmers' market. My best-selling "extra" was little packets of heirloom tomato seeds. 6 seeds for $1. I sold hundreds of packets. Why? They'd say, "Because the stuff in the store had no taste." But when they tasted my locally grown (organic) tomatoes they said, "This is what a tomato should taste like!". DUH! When telling them that a tomato plant looks really nice amongst the green meatballs that the builder planted when the house was new (20 years ago), and that they will have them yummy edibles all summer long - they bought 10 packets! They come to me later to ask how to preserve the cherries and plums that just "rot on the grass" in their yards and I tell them how, and, that they need to get rid of the grass and plant veggies! Heresey! Everybody needs acres of do nothing grass in front of their "palatial" estate. Oh, yeah? I was a Free Spirit (read Hippie) in the 60's. I grew stuff in pots (not pot) and fed a lot of people from tiny plots. This generation has no idea of what real food should taste like since the McDonalds and Bojangles rely on salt and preprocessed junk (my opinion, sorry) that is what they eat every single day. Give them real food, fresh local food, tangy fruit, plump non-hybridized veggies, and see how they respond. Amazement. I remember watching "Solyent Green" when it came out. I asked, as I still do, "Who grew those strawberries for the $150 jar of jam?" (not obvious dialogue unless you look for it) . If you don't remember the movie, or have never seen it, please rent it. Scary then as it is relevant now. The answer is, "We do! Here on the Harvest Forum.".

Nancy

This summer as I was getting back into food preservation, I shopped around a bit for a BWB and jars. They were flying off the shelves at Wal-Mart. It was all levels of economics too (judging by the way they dressed and talked).

Getting a new freezer became a similar project because so many of the stores were out of stock. We ended up with a bigger freezer than we expected because it was energy efficient and in stock. I had no trouble filling it either. Now we're glad we got the big one.

Nancy

You can't beat having at least 6 gallon sized bags of frozen broccoli crowns, or 8 gallon bags of yellow waxed beans that are also frozen. I suppose I could have canned, but these have a better taste and texture when frozen. My newer freezer is now full as is the older one that was fine after I had taken off the 'green plug' it was attached to. That device didn't save a cent of electricity, good thing they went out of business.

Growing up rurally in the 60's canning was a natural chore for the summer.
I still remember stabbing the wax topping of a new jar of jelly or trying to dig out the wax chunks after refrigeration. If my memory serves me correct, it was all the way into the early 80's when I started filling glass custard cups of jelly, seal with wax and wrap in cello wrap for gift baskets.
In the early 90's I was busy with a baby so I only canned elderberry and mulberry jellies, but continued baking.
Briefly I stopped all during a divorce period, then resumed full force about 6 years ago when relatives and friends asked why I didn't preserve anymore, requesting their favorites.
The past 2 years I have had more requests than ever for teaching how to make jams and jellies,recipes and my own canned and baked goods.
I thought with the crowds at WallyWorld buying jars this summer and the books flying off the shelves this season requests would slow down...but nooooo.

I was born and raised in the south so canning and freezing is a way of life for lots of people and my folks always had a big garden and my Mother just naturally got into canning. I think they rather joined the hippie "back to the land" movement and bought 99 acres and that's when then really got into being self sufficient and they raised their own meat and grew their own food. I think my parents good bill at the store was like 15 dollars a month for things like salt and sugar and flour....

So I guess I came by it naturally. I just loved to go to that old farm and I got a huge kick out of helping my Mother. We put away a ton of stuff.

Nancy, I remember Soylent Green! Even have nightmares about it sometimes. I did miss the remark about the strawberries, though. Surely, people aren't so dumb that they can't figure out how to grow a little food when hungry! Well, then again, maybe so.

I love the comment about the $150 jar of strawberry jam. One of the things the hubby and I decided this summer was that our goal was to improve our quality of food. If it saved money in the long term, that was great, but it was not our overriding goal since it will take a while to make back these investments.

On the other hand, I already made back the cost of the dehydrator and part of the freezer already with what I put away since we started this.

My husband has a habit of saying things like ...when he is eating Annies Salsa or things of that nature..."how much did you save growing your own tomatoes and I remind him that he is comparing apples to oranges...I said that might be a dollars worth of my tomatoes but it's about 5 bucks worth of store bought salsa ....and that doesn't even take into account how big my head gets when people eat my jam, jelly salsa etc etc and rave about how good it is.

I learned to can in the late 60s mainly because I didn't want my lilttle kids eating all the salt and sugar that was in the commercially canned produce.

Todays Moms don't want thier kids (or themselves for that matter) eating all the preservatives, dyes and other additives that are now in sooooo many commercial products.... much less the salt and sugar OR, especially, HFCS. I personnally know several younger women -- and men too -- who have started canning and freezing their own food specifically because of the above.

Perhaps this has a little more then something to do with this growing trend.

That's great news West! Childhood obesity is on the rise at dramtic rates. I see many kids overweight and have been known to make comments about the poor kids, who don't know better are morbidly overweight while looking at their parents.
During a recent trip to the AE store I was going thru the jeans rack saw a size 18 and a 20! This is mainly a teen, young adult store.

When my kid, was a baby I made all her babyfood, gosh so easy. Would grind to baby food and put in ice cube trays for portion control and freeze. At that time I did it because the price of jarred baby food i thought was way over priced. You could get almost an entire tray of sweet taters from one sweet tater, yet the one oz jars were 1$.

I do hope your right!

I'm certainly in the cattegory of "started for one reason and ended with a dozen". We made baby food for the last two grandchildren, and their doctor even commenteed on their immune systems! DH is convinced that the hormones in commercial beef are responsible for the early maturing teenage girls. We still have a choice -- thank you all for helping me keep my choice going!

Gran:
"Surely, people aren't so dumb that they can't figure out how to grow a little food when hungry"!

You know you can still buy plants with food stamps? I have never seen the Acess card given for veggie plants or fruit trees.

I had a college room mate who had grown up in a single parent home with 3 siblings. His mom taught them all how to cook healthy foods on a low budget. I learned a great deal from him about the flexibility, and savings, of buying pantry staples vs packaged mixes. I also learned how to make meat go further by adding veggies, barley, oatmeal, etc., buying bulk and packaging at home. I don't have a microwave, was given one as a gift once but didn't find much use for it so donated it to a charity.

After years of growing herbs and small veggies on balconies and in window boxes I finally got a house with a huge yard. Over the past 8 years I've revitalized the abandoned apple and pear tree, the berry bramble, rhubarb patch and the wild grapes. I "guerrilla harvest" fruits like crab apples and mulberries from parking lots, empty lots and local parks (after checking to see if it was okay). I started canning my own jams and fruit sauces. I've been adding veggies to the garden and figuring out which do well and which don't. I eat fresh all summer and freeze or can what I don't pig out on. :)

My friends nicknamed me "The Amish One" because I cook pretty much everything from scratch and grow as much as I can. Now, more and more of them are asking me to come over and help them figure out how to start their own veggie patches and how to make jams and sauces. Our local "heritage festival" is reinstating their jam/jelly judging this summer. I can't wait to submit my spiced plum jam!

Vaguely related...

This summer I also began to "guerrilla sow" flowers and veggies in gardens of several houses that have been abandoned or foreclosed in my neighborhood. These weren't intended for my own harvest, but simply to have growing and blooming things in the yards. A couple hours of work on a few foundation gardens yielded months of greenery, zinnias, sage, marigolds, cosmos and malva. Issues of trespass aside, it made the houses look more "lived in" and brightened up the neighborhood.

I read in the paper last year that Ball / Kerr sales were way up over the year before. I imagine the trend is continuing. Fortunately, our county fair has never stopped judging canning. I enter every year -- great fun!

Hi, I'm one of the "newbies" that has gotten really interested in preserving my harvest over the past two years. In 2006 I bought a house on 1/3rd of an acre and have been turning it into as much of a farm as I can. We started with gardens and improving the soil which led to the first critters which are in the worm bins. We made the three citrus trees happier (which has led to a huge crop this year.) Kept expanding the graden beds. Got Into Aquaponics so now we are farming fish as well as veggies. Anyone like the idea of netting a 3 lb catfish out of the yard and smoking it for dinner? Or Tilapia, we got some of those too but they like really warm water. Now our suburban farm includes 11 chickens (all girls) to provide eggs and help work the soil for new garden beds.

We got a chest freezer but I've found we can fill it up right quick. We have a dehydrator that is used for some things but seeing as we are in hot humid bug country, drying things sometimes doesn't work so well. I've been slowly collecting the supplies I need for canning and setting up my outdoor kitchen. Hopefully I have the stuff I need soon as I need to try canning some tangerine marmalade before they are too far gone. Also Kumquats will be gone soon too.

I too think it is sad that there are people out there who whine that "the man" has locked up all the food in the grocery stores and they must get welfare money in order to eat. I tell them that even living in an apartment, they can probably grow something. Then they whine that fertilizer is too $$. Dude, if you are that desperate, your own body pees out enough fertilizer to grow huge crops and yet you probably waste good clean drinking water to flush the toilet 12 times a day. Sigh
Of course there are those Homeowner associations and deed restricted places where one is not allowed to grow a veggie garden let alone allow a single blade of grass to get more than 3 1/2 inches high. Those are the places that will get very strange in the even of a collapse.

The truth is, there is little better than eating a meal that was mostly grown right in your own yard. I really enjoy the feeling of eating good food that we produced ourselves.

I see many of us have "soapboxes" and get really vocal about our survival skills! Wonderful! I hope the trend continues, but am still amazed at folks who don't know (or care) where their food comes from. I hear economic warnings and woes but still see people piling up the grocery cart with convenience foods, etc.

I make my own 'convenience foods! Most of my supermarket buying is just some sale items and Lacaid milk. I would never use human waste as fertilizer here, no matter how long its been composted. Any fertilizers I buy are shipped from out of state. The last big purchase was about $500 total, and almost $300 was just for shipping costs and the long distance. Most of the organics I get are not sold locally, or you have to buy a ton of it to get a shipment.

I guess I have always been amazed that people who obviously could use extra don't bother with any kind of gardening...I mean I never lived anywhere, even a USAF base that I didn't grow things. I had to hide them in the flower beds on base but I did grow beans and tomatoes.

I also think that people are really starting to worry about where the food comes from that they are eating. With more and more agra land being eaten up by housing, rising water costs, rising fertilizer costs (which is attached to oil prices)and , whether anyone believes it or not, the inability to use undocumented workers, many, many large growers are giving it up. In my little grocery store here in Wyoming, nearly all the produce has stickers that say "Chile" "Mexico" and a bunch of other countries. I fear that there is a new bio-contamination or disease problem just over the horizon.

I am seeing a lot of people takeing up vegie growing because they are afraid for their families, fearing they will get ecoli or salmonella or worse (and maybe not often but both of those can be life-threatening, given the right patient and set of circumstances.) I have systemic Lupus, an auto-immune disease, so my immune system is very compromised. I eat NOTHING that has not been processed within an inch of it's life. I re-pasturize milk that I buy and I make my own yogurt. I don't eat meat and I don't eat vegies (even ones we grow because I don't like them) I am allergic to wheat and eggs so that does not leave much! I probably know more about what's in food that isn't supposed to be more than than average person. Anyway, beyond the economy, I think health concerns are also a reason for a growing interest in growing and preserving your own food.