# Quantity Canning



## sss3 (Jul 15, 2007)

Several of you have said you can 100's of jars each year. If home canned goods nutrition only lasts a year, what do you do with these canned goods?


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## Breezy833 (Jun 17, 2013)

I think a lot of people on this forum, and other canners have big families. It seems to be a labor of love and nutrition. I am not a canner myself ( someday), but i think the answer your going to receive is "eat them".


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## Wendy (May 10, 2002)

I can around 1,000 jars each year of various things. We do have a large family. Not sure on the nutrition value being lost after a year. We are eating pears from 2005 yet & they are still good & taste just as good as the year I canned them. As long as the jar is sealed & all looks well with it, we still eat it. I try to can to cover 2 years as you never know when you might not get something one year. Last year I got nothing out of the garden because of a severe drought. I am glad I had enough canned from the previous year.


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## sss3 (Jul 15, 2007)

Wendy, I knew you had a big family. And canning that much makes sense. I've read, different places, about nutrition only lasting 1 yr. The most recent site was SBCanning. I specifically asked that question and that was the reply. I do think; taste and texture, lasts a lot longer.


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## Wendy (May 10, 2002)

I always rotate, oldest being used first. I think it is crazy the way most people get hung up on the sell by dates or use by dates on canned goods. The food wasted in our country is crazy! I learned from my mom who had 11 kids to provide for. We ate it as long as it looked good & had nothing wrong with the seal. There are some years where we have bumper crops of fruit. I can it up because I could not stand to see it go to waste. If that means we will be eating it for the next 8 years, oh well!  The limbs were breaking off of the pear trees that year. The good news is, they are almost used up!


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

It starts to lose some nutrition, slowly over time is loses a little, not all of it. We can a lot some years, some less, depending on harvest. If it was a great bean year last year we won't plant so much this year. If we don't have a lot of corn, say. We eat more green beans....James


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2013)

actual research, rather than anecdotal thoughts show that there is little or no nutritional loss in canned goods at one year. 
Results from an exhaustive University of Illinois study....
"From a nutritional standpoint, fruits and vegetables are low in calories and fat, and are important dietary sources of vitamins (particularly vitamins A and C and folic acid), minerals (potassium, in particular) and fiber. They contain no cholesterol and can contribute substantially to fiber intake, a food component almost always low in American diets. Conventional wisdom has said fresh produce always is better than processed. Our findings in this (as well as our 1995) study show canned fruits and vegetables generally stack up very well against fresh. Although there is some loss of vitamin C content during heat processing, canning usually results in stable levels of most essential nutrients (8). The amount of a vitamin or mineral or fiber in canned food remains the same, even after one to two years of storage."

Results of study can be found here.


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## Becka03 (Mar 29, 2009)

I 'unliked' SB Canning when I realized that they were bullying Canning Granny- they act like the Canning Police I am not a fan of that at all- 
I do not think there is any difference in the Tomato sauce I canned 2 yrs ago compared to 1 yr ago- 
but that is me- 
to each his own when it comes to that kinda thing but I figured I didn't need 'like' SB canning since they were acting like that.....


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## Rockwell Torrey (Aug 14, 2013)

Wendy said:


> I can around 1,000 jars each year of various things. We do have a large family. Not sure on the nutrition value being lost after a year. We are eating pears from 2005 yet & they are still good & taste just as good as the year I canned them. As long as the jar is sealed & all looks well with it, we still eat it. I try to can to cover 2 years as you never know when you might not get something one year. Last year I got nothing out of the garden because of a severe drought. I am glad I had enough canned from the previous year.



What she said.


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## sss3 (Jul 15, 2007)

Thanks for input. It was helpful.


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## sss3 (Jul 15, 2007)

Only read sbcanning actual recipes. Don't actually read comments or advice. HT has provided so much useful info; But there are many things I skip and don't pay attention to.


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## wannabechef (Nov 20, 2012)

Somewhere I read of canned goods being found in the water from a shipwreck in the 1800's and what was not broken had lost some nutritional value but was still edible. I will see if I can find the article.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2


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## danielsumner (Jul 18, 2009)

When I first started canning and got a freezer I put up and jarred everything in sight. We will never use some of the stuff. I've gotten smart. Only can and put in the freezer what I absolutely know we will use. No more quarts. I use pints, half pints and 1/4 pint jelly jars for everything. With just the two of us the small jars work well, no waste. I have pint jars of jalapenos slices, what am I going to do with a pint of jalapenos? The ones I put in the 1/4 pints work well for a recipe.


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## Limon (Aug 25, 2010)

wannabechef said:


> Somewhere I read of canned goods being found in the water from a shipwreck in the 1800's and what was not broken had lost some nutritional value but was still edible. I will see if I can find the article.


I remember an article awhile back about some home canned goods found in a basement that were over 40 years old. On a lark, they took them to one of the universities there in Utah. No spoilage, the texture had gotten a little mushy, perfectly edible, but not much left in nutrients. 

If you have questions about canning, go to the Ball site or the National Home Food Preservation Center for folks who know what they're talking about. Personally, any site that would give out such totally bogus information on viability is not a site to be trusted. They have no idea what in the world they are talking about.


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## sss3 (Jul 15, 2007)

This info was so useful. It's really made a difference in how much I'm going to can. Will do 1 bushel of peaches this afternoon. Because I live alone, didn't know if I should do so many.


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## MullersLaneFarm (Jul 23, 2004)

I didn't realize SB Canning had a forum. I have run into SB Canning Police in other forums that have told me I can't  can a recipe (or few) that I've made up. Even shared a recipe from the Blue Book for a Fiesta Salsa and was told that it wouldn't be safe WB for the specified canning time .... sheesh!

For the OP's question. I put up at least 500-750 jars a year & it is just (and sometimes Paul) and myself. Our 4 children do come home to do some grocery shopping.

Like Wendy, I try to can enough for 2 years at a time because you never know when you will have a crop failure. I'm still working on corn and beans from 2011 and they are every bit as good (texture & taste) as freshly canned. I just opened a quart of dill pickles dated 2005 (got lost in the back of the shelf). Not quite as crisp as the pickles from 2011, but every bit as tasty.

Every year I remove all the jars in my pantry, wash it down and make sure everything gets rotated.

I've kept a spreadsheet the last 2 years of what I've put up and this year, I'm adding how many jars are left when I start canning that item again.

This afternoon is Tomato - Basil sauce


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## Bellyman (Jul 6, 2013)

52 weeks in a year. 102 jars = 2 jars per week. 204 jars = 4 jars per week. And we still haven't opened 1 jar a day.

Some things, like peaches, will not likely give you a good crop every year so you'll want to put more away when the good years happen. Some things, like ketchup, you might not think about as being a "vegetable" but I know of families that eat a LOT of it. 

I suppose a lot has to do with 1) how big is your family, 2) how many people are you giving stuff away to or sharing with (which would include things like family reunions, picnics and potlucks), and 3) how much of what you eat are you buying at the grocery store?

I don't suppose it takes too many years for country folk to figure out what they eat from year to year and how much is enough to have put away, even figuring on the possibility of a year (or even longer) of total crop failure.

I know of a little lady that about 120 years ago would can something on the order of 800 jars of fruits and vegetables a year on a normal year. That was considered a usual and ordinary thing to do. That was what you and your family ate when the garden was not producing or when what you wanted to eat was not in season. She was also someone who couldn't run to the store every few days to pick up a few weeks worth of food. She went to the store a few times a year and mostly picked up things like salt and the kinds of staples that she didn't grow on the farm. That was just the way life was back then. She had very little cash and I suspect she ate out at restaurants only a handful of times her entire life.

We live quite differently today. For most, a grocery store containing most anything a person wants to eat is readily available. Or if you don't want to take the time to cook, a restaurant will feed you, for a price. Most people have the cash to buy most any food item they really want. A large segment of our population has no idea where food actually comes from (other than Walmart). So to people like that, hearing that someone has canned "hundreds of jars of food" sounds like a huge thing. If that's what you eat, and that's pretty much ALL you have to eat, those jars will go quickly. 

I can't help but think that this whole idea of cheap food is going to come crashing down one day, and there will be a lot of hungry people. We've already reached a point where nutrition is lacking even in an abundance of food.


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## calliemoonbeam (Aug 7, 2007)

First off, food does NOT lose it's nutrition within a year of being canned! I've never even heard such a short time span mentioned anywhere, although the standard government spiel is that "over time" it will. It just goes along with their "use by" or "past due" dates, which is all just a scam perpetuated on the people to force them to throw out perfectly good food and spend more money to line their pockets with. It has been tested and proven that home canned foods, while losing some of their nutritional value over freshly canned, was still nutritionally viable after 20+ years. I don't know that I'd personally want to eat food that old, lol, but if it was all I had I would. After 5-7 years? You betcha! And only 2-3 years? Certainly! SBCanning? I blew them off a long time ago also as self-righteous, hypocritical busybodies, ha!

I live alone, but I can a lot too, for several different reasons. The main reason, of course, is what others have mentioned, that you never know how your garden will be from one year to the next, so if you have a bumper crop, can it up in case next year you don't! For example, we had extreme drought the past two years and I had no garden at all, and this year we got started late due to cool, rainy weather and have had a really weird, cool rainy summer, so I haven't gotten much of a garden this year either! 

Two, I have medical issues, and I never know when I'm going to have a bad day or even a bad week or two. So I can as much as possible during my good spells (and I can year-round, not just in the summer). On bad days, sometimes it's impossible for me to cook, do dishes, etc., on top of the things I absolutely have to get done, but I have a wide variety of meals, veggies, beans, and fruits canned up. Rather than eating fast food or store-bought, processed foods with too much salt and too many additives (and who knows where the food actually comes from??), I can make some rice quickly and easily in the microwave and/or open a jar or two and have a complete meal with or without dessert within 10-15 minutes and barely any effort. What a blessing in my life!

Third, my son and his friends love my home canned and dehydrated foods. I give my son free stuff, of course, but his friends insist on paying me (very well in fact!) for the privilege of eating "real" food, something they never knew existed before meeting me, lol. They come from families who have always done boxed, canned, processed, and fast food and never knew there was anything better. They'll take my stuff over Mickey D's any day of the week. They also never had home baked bread, cookies, pies, etc., until knowing me. They actually squabble over my beef jerky, and I don't think I could ever make enough to make them all happy, lol. They all call me "Mama". Now that makes my heart happy and puts a smile on my face. 

Sorry for the length, lol, but that's just me.


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## MullersLaneFarm (Jul 23, 2004)

Bellyman said:


> 52 weeks in a year. 102 jars = 2 jars per week. 204 jars = 4 jars per week. And we still haven't opened 1 jar a day.


I generally open between 1-3 jars daily. 

Mostly this is because I can all but 6 of our chickens, 1/4 of our beef and pork when we get them processed (as well as canning any beef & pork still in the freezer when we put the new in.)

Canned food ... the Original Fast Food!


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## K.B. (Sep 7, 2012)

The number of jars used per year is as much about lifestyle, I think, than number of people in a household. 

It may take us awhile to go through a jar of jam/jelly, but it is easy for us to use a whole jar of a meat, stock, soup, bean, fruit, veggie or sauce for one meal. There are five of us in my family, so we tend to use quarts and pints. If there were less mouths to feed, I'd use smaller jars.

How many jars we go through in a day depends on the time of year (what is available fresh) and how crazy our schedule is (canned meat and other items are great for "convenience" food).

Having the reusable Tattler lids around also makes it easy to can frequently without extra expense. The same jars get reused alot.


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## sriston (Mar 30, 2013)

Almost everything we eat comes from our homestead. All of our vegetables and meat are raised and butchered by us. We are a large family, and for us to have a years supply of food involves more jars than I want to count.  Plus, as mentioned, many things can throw a kink into things- last year it was the drought. Sometimes it might be illness. One year recently we lost everything we had in the flood. (The jars of food survived, thank goodness.) After the flood, we did run out of food and had to eat grocery store food and I kid you not, it took our bodies 3 months to adjust to it. 

We never freeze anything if possible, because in a power outage we could lose our food. If our food is canned, it's ready to eat- I don't even have to worry about adding water to it.

It's a lot of hard work, and I am always so thankful when winter arrives and the canning season is over.


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## jwal10 (Jun 5, 2010)

We can plain. A jar of tomatoes makes 3 or 4 things. Ketchup or salsa, tomato juice and tomatoes for an enchilada casserole all from 1 jar. Peaches make juice, process some for sherbet and slices for a peach crisp....James


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