Preserving More Than Tomatoes: Local food preservation program runs risk of being canned

You don’t know which strawberries make the best jam. You’ve found a jar of blackish tomatoes in the back of your pantry. Your dilly beans exploded. You’re eating local this summer, and you can’t live without beef jerky, so you’d like to dry local flank steak. To whom can you turn for the best advice on how to proceed?

Chive blossom vinegar with lemon

Strawberry pinot gris jam

The Master Food Preservers to the rescue! One of Lane County’s best-kept food secrets is an organization that fielded almost 5,000 calls last year on a statewide food preservation and safety hotline. The hotline, which runs from June though the end of September, is only one of the many services the MFP volunteers provide. 

Founded in 1983 by OSU Extension faculty member Nellie Oehler, the Family Food Education/Master Food Preserver (FFE/MFP) program trains volunteers in an eight-week class in the basics of safely storing, canning, pickling, freezing and drying food. Almost 200 new and ongoing volunteers then take a state certification exam and devote at least 40 hours each per year, sharing their know-how in community programs, demonstrations and workshops. In 2007, volunteers made contacts with over 37,400 Oregonians.

One of the purest pleasures of life in the Willamette Valley is the seasonal produce, and the volunteer program trains local chefs, farmers, teachers and young homesteaders to handle the alchemical transformations known to our grandmothers. Training includes aspects appealing to different kinds of locals: It’s partly old-school home economics, with a vintage kitchen for several demonstrations each class and potluck sample lunches; partly an urban locavore fantasy, with workshops on making liqueurs, cheese and herbal jellies; and partly a survivalist’s best case scenario with root cellar, pressure canning meat and smoking salmon workshops. Participants all join a close-knit community that never stopped their Slow Food movements, educating others in being more self-sufficient in these challenging times. 

It is difficult to conceive that the program may be one more service cut with the loss of federal “timber money.” Every dollar Lane County gives to Extension services like the FFE/MFP program is matched at similar amounts by state and federal grants, so the recent cuts in the county operating budget hit FFE/MFP particularly hard. It lost a third of its 2008-09 budget and is at risk of elimination because the program’s federal and state funding for Extension are contingent upon continuing county funding.