One in five households in the United States practice home canning, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. The Center for Disease Control has stated that 30 percent of botulism cases from the past decade was caused by home canning practices. In an effort to promote safe canning practices in the Barren County community the County Agent for Family and Consumer Sciences partnered with retired agents and the Nutrition Education Program to present a 3 day Food Preservation Workshop. 

Fifteen participants completed the 2019 Barren County Food Preservation Program where they were taught the pressure canning, water bath canning, freezing and drying methods of food preservation.  Some (27%) of the participants were new to Cooperative Extension programming.  Almost half (43%) of the participants reported using food preservation methods sometimes and half (50%) reported using food preservation methods quite often prior to the program.  Participants said that they learned about the program through the Homemaker newsletter, Facebook, the Extension website, friends and family and the Extension office.  The reasons given by most participants for choosing to attend the program were to improve skills (88%), because of a desire to learn (63%), and to use the skills to save money (63%)*. 

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’.  While this class contained many participants who self-identified as ‘experienced’ prior to the class, some of participants reported an increase in skill levels, particularly for the pressure canning and water bath methods**.  All participants (100%) either strongly agreed or 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.

Over three-fourths (87%) of the participants reported growing a garden this year, and are planting in a combined total of over 83,721 square feet (1.9 acres) of garden area.  Many participants commented that the instructors did a great job and the knowledge shared with them was appreciated.  There were no suggestions for improvement.

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

**A Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed a statistically significant positive change in skill levels for the pressure canning (Z=-2.000, p=.046) and water bath (Z=-2.449, p=.014) methods.