| 
Looking to the Past, Preparing for the Future
By Carolyn Nicolaysen
“If ye are prepared ye shall not fear” (D&C 38:30).
What are people fearing today? Losing homes and jobs, increasing food and fuel costs, losing children and grandchildren to the pull of the world?
One of my greatest fears is that some who are vulnerable may not recognize it, and may not be prepared. Some young families have become accustomed to prosperity and their ability to charge expenses on a credit card and just assume there will always be "next month" to deal with debt.
Today there is an increasing desire for families to get out of debt and to be self-reliant. How did our ancestors do it? How did they prepare to be self-reliant while at the same time they faced dangers in the world that threatened their existence and their families?
The reasons for their concern may have been different, but their concerns were the same as ours — as can be seen in the words of Brigham Young:
If you are without bread, how much wisdom can you boast, and of what real utility are your talents, if you cannot procure for yourselves and save against a day of scarcity those substances designed to sustain your natural lives?(Journal of Discourses, 8:68.)
Our ancestors, both in and out of the Church, practiced skills we need to revisit if we truly desire to live all of the Lord's counsel and become self reliant.
We can heed warnings. We have been told that many had been given [a warning] concerning the vulnerability of New Orleans. We are told by seismologists that the Salt Lake Valley is a potential earthquake zone. This is the primary reason that we are extensively renovating the Tabernacle on Temple Square. This historic and remarkable building must be made to withstand the shaking of the earth.
We have built grain storage and storehouses and stocked them with the necessities of life in the event of a disaster. But the best storehouse is the family storeroom. In words of revelation the Lord has said, “Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing” (D&C 109:8). Our people for three-quarters of a century have been counseled and encouraged to make such preparation as will assure survival should a calamity come. — Gordon B. Hinckley, “If Ye Are Prepared Ye Shall Not Fear” Liahona, Nov 2005.
The time has arrived to learn about preserving food.
Genesis
It all began with Nicolas Appert in early 19th-century France. Napoleon, knowing that his army needed a stable source of food, offered a cash prize for anyone who could come up with a method for preserving food. Appert won with a system that began with precooking food, and placing the food in an airtight glass jar.
Hot cooked foods were placed in bottles, stoppered with hand-cut corks fitted to the irregularities of the blown glass, sealed with a mixture of lime and skim milk and then processed in a boiling water bath.
Experimenting with container sizes, types and shapes continued — in glass, tin, wax and lead, and with different kinds of lids. Finally in 1858, an inventor and tin smith from New York City, John L. Mason, invented the Mason jar. He invented a machine that could cut threads into lids, which made it practical to manufacture a jar with a reusable, screw-on lid. The system was ready to market.
Canning jars became known as glass cans or fruit jars, probably because fruits were canned most often. Foods continued to be precooked and packed hot in the heated jars, then filled with heated syrups or brines and sealed quickly. The seals often failed.
It was then suggested foods be packed raw in jars and cooked in a hot water bath, and then, as before, filled with hot liquids and sealed. Again food spoilage sometimes occurred.
Can you imagine all that work? Cook the food, place it in a bottle, seal the edge, and process it again, only to have the seal fail. When Brigham Young was counseling self reliance, this was the method our great-grandparents had to use to follow that counsel.
Food Pioneers
In 1882, Henry William Putnam invented a fruit jar that used a glass lid and a metal clamp to hold the lid in place. These "Lightning jars" became popular because no metal (which could rust and break the seal) contacted the food. Metal clamps made the lids easier to seal and remove. In 1883, William Charles Ball and his brothers changed from tin to glass containers and in 1886, to glass fruit jars.
In 1903, Alexander H. Kerr founded the Hermetic Fruit Jar Company and provided the first wide-mouth canning jars. These were much easier to fill. In 1915, he invented a flat metal disk with a permanent composition gasket. Thus the system we know today was born! For the first time canning jars and rings could be reused, making canning easy and affordable.
All this came just in time for World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic. Victory gardens were grown and food preserved or there was no food. Men were absent from the farms and processing plants fighting a war. Food was used for the military forces first, and those they were fighting to protect needed to become industrious and self-reliant to supply their own family needs.
Resurrecting an Old Art
We have it easy now. Canning jars are inexpensive and readily available. Many can be found at flea markets and garage sales or just stored away on shelves waiting for a younger generation to ask for them.
We may not yet be in circumstances where we need to can our own food, but if something happens and we need to, will we know how? Do you, your children, and your grandchildren know how to preserve your own foods? Now is the time to learn, to teach others, and to put it back into practice.
I remember my first attempts at canning. I did not grow up with a family who canned because both of my parents were raised in Brooklyn, and as I grew up, they were both busy working demanding jobs. But my grandfather canned pickles each year.
I loved those pickles. He would tell me stories of the time he spent with his mother canning at the turn of the century, before our modern jars. When I joined the Church and married, I decided I needed to learn to can. I started with my grandfather's pickles. They were wonderful and would have lasted two years if I hadn't shared. My first lesson — learn how much a recipe will make. My second lesson — try not give away everything you can.
I have experienced it all — jars that didn't seal, recipes that tasted awful, and even a burst jar or two. I have great memories of canning with my children, although they did not love the experience. Now I am canning much less, but my children know how. Some of them can, and I have passed on jars and equipment to them.
If you are concerned about the cost of accumulating your food storage, May is the time to get ready to do some canning. Most if not all of us have sources for fruits and vegetables which are free or inexpensive, if we work at finding them. In years past, neighbors would share their harvest from gardens. People still do, if we watch, if we grow some things ourselves to share, and if we are not afraid to ask. Begin today to make a list of friends and family who have fruit trees and gardens and ask them if they will share or trade.
You may think you don't like canned carrots, for example. Do you ever eat canned soups or stews? Those contain "canned" carrots. If you don't like them by themselves, add them to your own, homemade, soups and stews.
Canning will answer so many of our fears. It will provide a safe and inexpensive food source in case of a job loss, help stave off the affects of rising prices, free up cash to help with our mortgage and other expenses and provide us with time to spend talking to our children as they help. It will provide valuable skills and most importantly be an example to our friends and family, that we take the Lord's counsel seriously and are willing to work hard to obey it.
Planting a Garden
Another lesson we can learn from our ancestors is the importance of planting a garden. Do you remember the e-coli scare of 2006? Now we are experiencing food shortages worldwide. Imported foods from some foreign countries have been stopped due to fear of contamination, either in growing or processing those foods. Most recently, some food imports have been stopped due to lead in the cans. When we grow our own foods we know exactly what we are getting. This is true of canning also, and when we take our foods from the garden, to canning jar, and then to our table we have the safest food possible. This provides a far safer food source for those who have infants and others in the family with dietary concerns and food allergies.
Planting a garden does not always mean you have to dig up the yard, but it may. Gardens can be very successfully planted in pots or planters. My grandfather, the canner, had an entire feast of vegetables planted in pots and old plastic buckets on the balcony of his retirement apartment at the New Jersey shore. He grew several varieties of tomatoes, zucchini, radishes, lettuce, green beans and even pumpkins!
Vegetables and berries can be incorporated into flower beds. Many now live in apartments or homes on very, very small lots. Seek out a friend and offer to help plant and weed in exchange for part of the crop. In a ward in Oregon a bishop has divided his yard into plots and offered them to ward members. Many of us could do this. Now is the time.
Live in a cold climate? When I was in high school, that same grandfather built a hot house (greenhouse) in our backyard. It was very primitive. The door was an old door salvaged from a remodel job. Old windows were found at the dump, and in a few weeks they were nailed together and formed the walls and roof of our hot house. He started all his seedlings in there, transferred them to the yard when the weather got warm, and we had a huge garden.
President Spencer W. Kimball counseled:
I hope that we understand that, while having a garden, for instance, is often useful in reducing food costs and making available delicious fresh fruits and vegetables, it does much more than this. Who can gauge the value of that special chat between daughter and Dad as they weed or water the garden? How do we evaluate the good that comes from the obvious lessons of planting, cultivating, and the eternal law of the harvest? And how do we measure the family togetherness and cooperating that must accompany successful canning? Yes, we are laying up resources in store, but perhaps the greater good is contained in the lessons of life we learn as we live providently and extend to our children their pioneer heritage.(Conference Report, Oct. 1977, p. 125; or Ensign, Nov. 1977, p. 78.)
You may feel you do not have the skills to teach yourself or your family. Ask for help. Someone in your ward or neighborhood has the skill and experience, and will be glad to teach you. If you need help I will post some helpful websites on my blog.
Volunteers Needed
If you are experienced at preserving and canning food, volunteer to share or teach those skills to others. What would happen if all of us went to our wards and branches and either asked for help or volunteered to teach? We could be prepared in no time!
Don't think you can teach? Consider what President James E. Faust said:
It is a denial of the divinity within us to doubt our potential and our possibilities ("The Responsibility for Welfare Rests with Me and My Family,” Ensign, May 1986).
We should look to church leaders to make us aware of the canning resources found in the many bishops’ storehouses and canneries operated by the Church. As a stake cannery representative, I was amazed at the number of commodities available for members to can for their own families, both wet and dry pack. In some areas, you may not be told about these resources, unless you ask and find the people assigned to this resource. The availability of these commodities, and the cannery time to pack them, may be very limited — so you must be proactive and persistent and flexible, to find the times available, and to be there and do it.
Some have said: “We have followed this counsel in the past and have never had need to use our year’s supply, so we have difficulty keeping this in mind as a major priority.” Perhaps following this counsel could be the reason why they have not needed to use their reserve ("The Responsibility for Welfare Rests with Me and My Family,” President James E Faust, Ensign, May 1986).
Return
to Top of Article
Click
here to sign up for Meridian's FREE email updates.
© 1999-2008 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
|
