Six participants completed the 2019 LaRue County Food Preservation Program where they were taught the pressure canning, water bath canning, freezing and drying methods of food preservation.  Most (83%) of the participants were new to Cooperative Extension programming.  One-third (33%) of the participants reported using food preservation methods quite often and half (50%) reported using food preservation methods sometimes prior to the program. Participants said that they learned about the program through Facebook, the newspaper and through friends and family.  The reasons given by participants for choosing to attend the program were because of a desire to learn (50%), to improve skills (50%), an interest in heritage skills (33%), and to use to save money (33%)*.

End of program evaluation results indicate increase in food preservation skills among participants.  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 the correct method for canning low acid and high acid foods after the program.

Over half of the participants (67%) reported growing a garden this year, and are planting in 43,620 square feet (over an acre) of garden area.