Twelve participants completed the 2019 Taylor-Green Counties Food Preservation Program where they were taught the pressure canning, water bath canning, freezing and drying methods of food preservation.  Over a third (36%) of the participants were new to Cooperative Extension programming.  Many (73%) of the participants reported using food preservation methods sometimes, and 18% reported never or rarely using food preservation methods prior to the program.   Participants said that they learned about the program through the Homemaker newsletter, Facebook, the Extension website, and from the FCS Agent.  The reasons given by most participants for choosing to attend the program were to improve skills (91%), because of a desire to learn (73%), an interest in heritage skills (46%), to save money (46%), to interact with others (46%), and to preserve food grown in their gardens (18%)*.

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 one-third of the participants reported an increase in skill levels, particularly for the drying method**.  All participants (100%) agreed or 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, understood the difference in and could identify the correct method for canning low acid and high acid foods and could identify spoilage in home preserved products after the program.

Many of the participants (73%) reported growing a garden this year, and are planting in a combined total of over 38,200 square feet (over 4/5 an acre) of garden area.   Participants commented that they enjoyed the classes.  One participant commented that it was difficult to follow instructions for two types of jams at once.

*These items accepted multiple responses, so total percent may exceed 100%.

**A Wilcoxson signed-rank test showed a statistically significant positive change in skill levels for the drying method (Z=-2.000, p=.046).