Seven participants, including two youth* under the age of 18, completed the 2019 Hancock County Food Preservation Program where they were taught the pressure canning, water bath canning, freezing and drying methods of food preservation.  Half (50%) of the participants were new to Cooperative Extension programming.  A third (33%) of the participants reported using food preservation methods never or rarely, and half (50%) reported using food preservation methods sometimes prior to the program.  Participants said that they learned about the program through the Homemaker newsletter, Facebook, the Extension website, through friends and from the Extension office.  The reasons given by most participants for choosing to attend the program were because of a desire to learn (83%), for personal accomplishment (67%), and an interest in heritage skills (67%).**

End of program evaluation results indicate an increase in food preservation skills.  Before and after the program, participants self-report their skill level for each method as either ‘beginner’, ‘intermediate’ or ‘experienced’.  Approximately half of the participants reported an increase in skill levels from ‘beginner’ to ‘intermediate’, particularly for the freezing and drying methods.  All participants (100%) strongly agreed they had better skills in home food preservation methods, could identify research-based methods of home food preservation, could identify the necessary equipment for home food preservation methods and could identify spoilage in home preserved products after the program.  All participants either strongly agreed or agreed that they understood the difference in and could identify the correct method for canning low acid and high acid foods after the program.