Life in Virginia's Appalachia: Canning

[Announcer] This program is brought to you by the generous support of The Secular Society, advancing the interest of women and the arts in Virginia and beyond.

[Announcer] Thoughtful, functional, beautiful!

Berry Home Centers can design your dream kitchen.

We focus on customer service so you can focus on what matters.

Serving Southwest Virginia for more than 50 years, and now, the New River and Roanoke Valleys.

[Jay Prater] Virginia's Appalachia.

Rich in culture and tradition and largely misunderstood by outsiders, the region is a bridge from the past to the present.

This series will explore local legend and lore mixed with the science and skill you'll only find in Virginia's Appalachia.

For this installment of Life in Virginia's Appalachia, we'll be diving into the tradition of canning.

We're back on the road to get an idea of what canning looked like 100 years ago, and how it's changed today.

-It's just the best day of the year.

-It's the best day of the year.

-Canning isn't unique to Appalachia, but it has persisted here consistently.

-My dream, when I was a little girl, was to grow up and have a big garden and can food.

And now, that's what I do.

I'm living my dream.

[Lester Schonberger] You are intentionally taking this fresh product and you are preserving it in a way that you are intentionally setting aside to eat in the future, to enjoy in the future.

[Jay Prater] Our first stop is at J&J Farms in Hillsville, Virginia, and the Carroll County Cannery to learn about a local family tradition of cooking and canning apple butter in one specific black kettle that's been passed down for generations.

[♪♪♪] -So, it all started on a reunion day when my mother, we had the original copper kettle of the Gardner homeplace at our house in the basement, not being used for years.

And my mother wanted to loan it out to the Gardner family to use, and we presented it at a family reunion one summer.

And out of that came the idea from Jill and I that we would do an Apple Butter event.

And we have done it for seven years, and it's become a three-day event, and just a really great time for fellowship.

[woman] Oh, that's just beautiful.

[man] She said no.

[woman] Okay.

-I was trying to cover it.

-I know.

Yeah.

[muted chatter] [♪♪♪] [woman] Oh, and the napkins are just flying.

[man] Take a bite of it.

-Mmm.

-[man] All right, are you ready?

-Mmm.

[♪♪♪] -Earlier we had one.

[woman] You know, if you need to put that down, you can put it down right here.

-No, I'm fine to serve, it's my role in life, so.

[♪♪♪] -Oh, yeah, so good.

Cinnamon.

[♪♪♪] -See?

Oh, no.

No, no.

Might be hot.

-Oh!

Oh, my god.

Oh my God.

-That was so good.

[♪♪♪] Nice.

That is a little bit of heaven.

-Little bit.

-We started this, as Millie said, in 2017, and a friend of ours told us about the cannery.

And I think a lot of people in this area, in fact, Jack's sister Sarah Perry and Larry, their church had used the cannery for years.

So, we were familiar with the cannery, and we realized that if we were going to make Apple Butter here at the farm, that we really needed a shortcut to process the apples to make it a one-day event here at the farm .

So, for seven years now, we 've been going to the cannery on Friday before Apple Butter Saturday to process 20 to 22 bushel of apples where because of the cannery facility and equipment, we can buy the most beautiful apples here at local orchards and we can take them to the cannery, and just quartered, we don't have to peel them and core them.

Because of the cannery, we can just quarter them on Thursday night, take them to the cannery, cook 'em down and run them through the strainer at the cannery.

And it produces the most magnificent, beautiful applesauce.

And that's a feature of the cannery that we can't reproduce here at the farm.

The staff at the cannery is so knowledgeable and certified and helpful that we show up with hands and they have the expertise and the training and the equipment that allow us to make the apple butter here at the farm.

We do not know what we would do without the cannery.

We've also learned that we like to process our pints at the cannery because the water bath and the steam bath capabilities at the cannery allow us to do what would take us probably weeks here at the farm.

So, the staff, the equipment, the space, the friendliness, the history, and everything makes us love the cannery, and it's just become part of our annual tradition, is to utilize the Carroll County Cannery to allow us to make Apple Butter here at the farm.

-I am a novice canner and look forward to being able to use the cannery here more often.

It's a wonderful facility that we're very proud of here in Carroll County.

Rex Horton and Cindy Worrell do a fabulous job for us, and we're just glad that we can keep it open and provide this service to our citizens and those around us.

-Well, people really love the cannery and like using the cannery because home canning is sought out now.

You know, you find it's a whole lot easier to come here.

It's cheaper on them.

You don't dirty your kitchen up.

It's easy cleanup, you know.

Well, a lot of people come in and say, well, I want to can something, and I don't really know how to do it.

And I say, well, that's great because, you know, I've got steps and learned different methods and better ways.

It's quicker and it's easier, and it makes it easy on them and they really appreciate that.

-The cannery's been in Carroll County my whole life since I've started as the tourism manager for Carroll County.

I realized a lot of people, at least my generation and below, don't really know that the cannery is there.

Even some people that have lived here almost their whole lives doesn't know that the cannery is there.

I would come into the office, and the parking lot would smell amazing.

And so, I ventured over an d Rex really showed me around, and I just find it fascinating that we have such a facility to be able to utilize.

It's very low cost for county residents, and for travelers outside of the county as well.

And so, it's just a huge community asset for people to learn how to preserve food, and to be able to preserve it.

We are a certified kitchen, so they can sell the goods that they make there.

A lot of canneries are not certified kitchens as well.

So, it's more so for just personal use.

The community that's around it, you know, people come in from all over to cook together and connect over food.

And that's everything that I'm very passionate about as well.

And so, being able to be a part of that is just a blessing.

[Millie Wycoff] Well, we got up at 4.30 in the morning and started that process of cooking the apples in the morning, just from like the-- We had to peel the apples, we had to core them and all, and that's the process that we started.

So, we normally started like at 4.30 in the morning, and it was an all-day process.

But for many years, like I said, the kettle had not been used.

So, my mom was 94 when she passed, and she was just beyond excited about us using this and bringing family, because she is family-oriented and was instrumental in our family gathering.

So, she was beaming on Apple Butter Day.

[Jill] Last year, we had 17 of the newest generation children who chose to take their time to drive here and be a part of Apple Butter.

And it's a tradition that we hope carries on.

Rex is going to bring his guitar this year and play.

It's just the best day of the year.

-It's the best day of the year.

[Jay Prater] Next up, Virginia Tech to meet Danille Christensen.

She's associated with the school's Food Studies Program and teaches Appalachian studies courses.

Who better to tell us about the historical context of canning and the cultural significance it has in Virginia's Appalachia.

-When people think about canning as a tradition, they often assume that it's like age-old, time immemorial, passed down from generation to generation.

When in fact, canning as we know it, using the water bath method or using a pressure canner for foods that, for low acid foods, that is really a 20th century kind of endeavor.

So, in the late 1880s, when John Mason's patent ran out on his glass jars, other companies came in, and they started creating and marketing jars as well.

People didn't really start canning meat and vegetables using a water bath or a pressure cooker method until about right before World War I.

And that's when pressure canners started to become more available to regular people.

And it's also when this training from the USDA was going on about sort of the extended periods that food needed to be processed.

Canning isn't unique to Appalachia, but it has persisted here consistently for a couple of reasons.

And that's because to do canning on a large scale, you really need an infrastructure.

You need people who can help you grow your garden.

You need people who can provide the labor to actually prepare the food and put it in jars.

You need to have spaces in which you can store the food so that people build can houses or dairies or cellar houses.

These were usually spaces that were unheated.

And so, when winters used to be consistently cold, you also had the benefit of refrigeration that helped prolong the life of, you know, things, even if they weren't pressure canned.

You also need, obviously, access to fresh and inexpensive produce.

And so, one of the things that has also persisted in the mountains is a tradition of seed saving.

So that people have selected the seeds that grow the kind of produce that is really perfect for their area and also for their tastes, right.

And so, as people are using Heirloom seeds, they're creating produce that has the taste that they want, that they can't get anywhere else.

Why, in places like Appalachia, canning is still a really important activity and not at all a dying art.

So, you'll notice that a lot of the existing canneries from the '40s, for instance, in Virginia, are on school properties.

And many of them still are un der the administrative purview of board of supervisors or school officials, right.

And that is, in part, because there was a close relationship between the kinds of home economics classes that were going on in schools an d this practical application.

It's also a way to get the schools and the community members more involved.

You know, people tend to think about rural spaces or about the past as a space that was dominated by necessity and poverty.

And canning and preserving was never simply only about necessity.

So , it has been really important to family economies and helping people get through the winter, especially in places where access to, even today, access to grocery stores or fresh produce might be difficult.

But it's always also been about beauty and about relationships, and about forethought, being a hard worker.

And so, there are all kinds of community and personal values that are wrapped up in the process and that can be expressed through the products that you make.

[Jay Prater] Calloway Cannery is located in Calloway, Virginia.

Toni Stump runs the cannery and gives us the ins and outs of modern day canning.

[♪♪♪] -God put me on this planet to run this little building.

Canning is my passion.

If you've seen it in the grocery store, you can can it at home or we can can it here, including things you don't see, like the canned cakes.

We can those here a lot.

But yes, we can everything we can.

Well, we can a lot of things you don't see in the store like people can sausage, and they can their deer meat.

We can hamburger.

I had a fella here once that came from Alaska and we canned his salmon.

So, oh, we've canned bear.

We've canned alligator.

So, we've canned a lot of things you don't see in the grocery store.

But if you've seen it in the grocery store, we can do it here.

A lot of people, they can more modern stuff.

They make, a lot of the newer people, they make their stuff prettier.

A lot of people can.

They want to use more organic chicken broth or organic vegetables.

But no, not really.

Not a whole lot has changed other than the looks.

And I guess maybe, somewhat, people don't add as much salt as they used to.

They don't add as much sugar as they used to.

So, I guess some things have changed.

[♪♪♪] This is the same setup it was 50 or 60 years ago.

This building was built in the mid-'40s.

And this is pretty much probably mostly original equipment still.

Yes.

The retorts at the end, the huge pressure cookers are called retorts.

They are original, so, from the '40s.

It was built to be a cannery.

And it was built during... Roosevelt, with the victory gardens.

All of the schools used to have a cannery behind them.

And that's how the schools were fed, was from the canneries.

And nowadays, of course, they can't feed from the canneries because we're not USDA-inspected.

But that used to be, the purpose of the canneries was to feed the schools.

And then, they were also, the community came in and canned.

But their original purposes were for school children.

My grandmother and my granny were both big canners.

And my dream, when I was a little girl, was to grow up and have a big garden and can food.

And now, that's what I do.

I'm living my dream.

I know that sounds silly to a lot of people probably.

But my mother was a big city lady.

And she wasn't much on the farm or the canning.

And that's what I wanted to do, I guess, be opposite of my mother.

So, I've made it.

[laughs] My mother would never be caught dead in a pair of bibs.

[♪♪♪] We are open to the public, come on in.

And if you feel, if you're intimidated or you feel like you don't know anything about canning, come on in.

We'll hold your hand.

We'll teach you.

We'll show you what to do.

And I promise you, within three tries, you'll be teaching someone else.

You'll know what to do, and it'll be very easy.

Canning is not hard.

It's really not hard to can your own food.

We do things different here than you do at home.

At home, you can do something called cold packing or cold canning.

Here, I have to can everything hot.

So, that is a big difference from home canning is here, we have to can everything hot here.

So that's about the only thing, really.

If you can do it at home, we do it here a lot faster and a lot neater.

[chuckles] Because we have a ditch do wn the middle of the kitchen, which you don't have at home.

When I first walked into this little building, I kid you not, I got tears in my eyes.

I felt like I had come home.

And I never, look, I'm getting chill bumps, I'm going to cry.

I never thought I would be able to run this building.

And I'm so proud that I do.

I am.

It's a dream come true.

They'll have to drag me out of here.

[Jay Prater] Finally, some words of caution with Lester Schonberger, Associate Extension Specialist at Virginia Tech.

He has practical advice when it comes to canning in the modern age to keep us from getting sick from improperly canned foods.

-Within Cooperative Extension, home food preservation and canning programs are one of our keystone programs.

They're ones that our agents all across the Commonwealth offer in their local communities.

And so, we are able to connect the research-based, science-based ways to preserve foods at home through Virginia Tech and Virginia Cooperative Extension through agents in local communities.

And our agents are the ones who are offering hands-on programs so people can learn to can if they've never done it before.

Or they can learn new ways to preserve foods at home if they want to learn something different.

And they do that all throughout the year.

I think there are a couple of reasons why these programs are important, and to keep them alive, especially from my perspective in working with Virginia Cooperative Extension, is that we pride ourselves in sharing research-based, science-based recipes so that when we teach somebody how to can something at home, we're giving them a process that if they follow, that they will consistently produce a safe and quality product.

I will often get questions from people who say, my grandma canned salsa and she used this recipe, and I'm sure that recipe is delicious.

But we have no science to document that that recipe is safe.

And so, what we can do is share with them, we've got these recipes from these sources, many of them coming from Cooperative Extension, that are research-based.

And so that if you follow this, you're not going to in advertently make yourself sick or the people that you gift that food to sick.

And so, our programs are important so that we can get this information out there, and develop a sense of trust that people can have in our programs, and that we're giving them th at science-based information.

The best piece of advice that I could give to somebody who's wanting to get started with canning, or has been canning for a long time, would be to reach out to your local Extension agent.

So, to contact your local Extension office, and develop that relationship because whenever you have questions, that's a really great first stop.

To say, I'm having this challenge, or I want to do this.

How can I do that safely?

And that Extension agent will be able to answer those questions.

Another thing that I just want to really focus on is for people to use science-based recipes.

I know I've said it a lot as part of this interview, but there are so many recipes out there that don't have the science to support that they're going to produce a safe product.

But if you don't follow a science-based recipe, there's no guarantee that you are going to produce that safe product.

And we don't want people to do that.

We want people to enjoy wh at it is that they're canning.

And so, to follow these science-based recipes that are coming from a cooperative Extension service, that are coming from the USDA.

One of the resources th at I really like to highlight is a book from the University of Georgia.

It's called So Easy to Preserve.

The University of Georgia is the home to the National Center for Home Food Preservation, and we share a lot of their resources.

And so, another thing for anybody who watches is, if you are pressure canning and you are using a dial gauge pressure canner, have your dial tested every year.

And that is something that we also do through Cooperative Extension.

[♪♪♪] [Announcer] This program is brought to you by the generous support of The Secular Society, advancing the interest of women and the arts in Virginia and beyond.

[Announcer] Thoughtful, functional, beautiful!

Berry Home Centers can design your dream kitchen.

We focus on customer service so you can focus on what matters.

Serving Southwest Virginia for more than 50 years, and now, the New River and Roanoke Valleys.