Can It! 125 Years of Canning in America

I picked my first garden tomato yesterday, a red, ruby delight just waiting for me to bite into it, juice running everywhere and the fresh taste of Indiana home grown tomatoes bursting in my mouth! It was wonderful. Okay, I sliced it into three pieces and shared with my husband and daughter and we all agreed that the first tomato from the garden is the best. If you've never eaten a fresh home grown tomato you truly have never eaten a tomato. The difference between those and store tomatoes is night and day! There is no comparison. It's almost as though they are completely different vegetables!

I also know that the first tomato signals the beginning of canning season at my house. It won't be long before that first tomato turns into bushels of tomatoes!! And so I begin my preparation for the hundreds of jars of tomatoes, juice, applesauce, green beans, chow, chow, and pickled beets that will line my pantry cupboards come October and the end of canning season.

But none of it can occur without the canning jar and for me, there is no other canning jar but the infamous Ball jar. If you are familiar with canning, you'll recognize the name. Perhaps your grandmother had a blue Ball jar that she used, or perhaps your mother make strawberry jam and bottled it each year in Ball jam jars.

The fruit of our orchard and the vegetables from our garden were transformed into the stuff of winter meals as we picked, washed, cut, preserved and canned. Heavy wooden boards lain across concrete blocks in the basement held the summer bounty and bridged the gap until fresh spring vegetables appeared once again in the garden.

For me, the Hoosier connection to Ball Brothers Jars begins in neighboring Muncie Indiana where in 1887, the Ball Brothers moved their thriving glass manufacturing company. The Ball brothers had begun their business, The Wooden Jacket Can Company in 1880 in New York, In 1884 they made their first glass fruit jars, followed by the famous zinc cap in 1885. By 1886, Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing was incorporated and after a fire destroyed their New York factory, Muncie became their new home.

The impact of Ball Manufacturing on the community is evident as you drive through the community and see students at Ball State University, go to the Ball Memorial Hospital for treatment or watch a ball game at Ball Memorial Park. And this year if you journey to Muncie you can visit the wonderful Minnetrista Center which is built on the ground where Frank C. Ball built his first home in Muncie.

Can It! 125 Years of the Ball Jar

At the Can It! 125 Years of the Ball Jar, April 4^th through August 23, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about how Ball jars have impacted the lives of people throughout the world. We visited the exhibit for the first time last week and learned so much. During the entire month of July, you can get into Minnestrista and the Can It! Exhibit for a $4.00 admission fee, a special reduced summer pass.

"This is an important and exciting exhibit for this area," said Rebecca Holmquist, vice president of Visitor Experience at Minnetrista. "Can It! tells an engaging and interactive story of the influence of the Ball jar." Presented by Jarden Corporation, the exhibit includes historical photos, 125 years of Ball jars, actual machinery used in early manufacturing, video, hands-on activities, live performances by Minnetrista Theatre Preserves, and an opportunity for visitors to add their own personal experiences to the exhibit."

Visitors to the exhibit can watch live demonstrations of modern canning machines and have the opportunity to can their own preserves to take home! In 1898, Frank Ball patented the first semi-automatic canning machine and demonstrations daily show how man and machine worked together to build a company whose name people recognize everywhere, Ball Canning Jars.

Two model kitchens will allow visitors to explore and understand the influence historical canning and modern canning. Kids can put on a apron and "work" in a play kitchen built just for them. Tearing the kids away will prove difficult, trust me! You can assist your budding chef, fill canning jars and even prepare real produce!

The Minnestrista Theater Preserves will be performing two dramas for visitors at 1 p.m and 3:30 p.m on weekends. Tales from the Mouth of a Ball Jar will share the stories the Southern Methodist Orphans jar and the KKK jar. We did not get to see these, but I want to make sure to go back one weekend in July to check them out.

While I have my precious store of a few prized Ball jars, including one from 1904, I was not aware that collecting Ball jars has become a major obsession for many. During research for this article I met a very nice lady named Lauren Devine, who is a member of the Midwest Antique Fruit Jar and Bottle Club and her row upon row of Ball jars makes mine look like a half thought.

Lauren also does canning exhibitions and she says canning is back! That the increase in home gardens is leading to an upsurge of interest in canning from younger homemakers who didn't have their mothers and grandmothers teach them.

For Lauren and I, we grew up with Ball jars in our kitchens. We hand the distinctly wonderful job of washing the jars for each canning batch. With hands immersed in soapy water to our elbows, it was our tiny hands that could squeeze inside a jar and really scrub it good. As our hands outgrew the scrubbing, we moved on to more important tasks. Breaking green beans, stuffing the jars just right with fresh peeled peaches, and even ladling boiling hot water over the tomatoes prior to cold packing.

Canning has it's jargon and practices and procedures and the results of this wonderful hobby can be admired for it's beauty in gleaming glass jars jam packed with the colors of summer. And better than that. It can be tasted on our winter dinner plates when we yearn for those summer days to return!

Resources Used in Research

Jars of the past

Minnestrista Cultural Center

Midwest Antique Fruit Jars and Bottle Club

Short History of Canning in America