I love to garden and can. The fresh produce from my garden has been a pleasant experience rich with fresh veggies for salads and other homemade dishes. My tomatoes have done well. I've put up sauces, jellies, jams, and other goods. Yes, it is hot canning in the kitchen but the high quality food is worth it.
Since I have been canning like crazy I decided to feature several articles on the history of canning.
The first link provides the history of commercial canning brought about by a military need for safer easier food for soldiers. Eventually the factories used tin cans and this article discusses the way the cans were made and how the food was preserved. Click here to read more about commercial canning.
The average homemaker in history preserved food from the family farm or garden by salting, curing, drying, or storing food in a cellar. I remember visiting many a cellar and seeing the curing process on farms growing up. The next link provides the history of home canning by homemakers of yesteryear.
"Carrie Hubbard Davis lived on rural Long Island in 1881, and noted in her diary that her mother had only brought her "2 fruit jars." On the other hand, city women who functioned in the cash economy because of their husbands’ salaries bought both the jars and the food to can in them. It would almost seem that American small town women, whose home economy was based on access to funds, were in the best position to get at both. Their backyard gardens and those of their farming cousins were full of seasonal produce for "putting up," and their economics allowed for the jars. Their diaries refer regularly to the "cans" and "jars" with which they provided for winter. In any case, the jar prices came down and women built up their stock of reusable containers, entrenching home canning in rural settings." Click here to read the rest of the story.
Both articles are interesting reads.
Donna
