IthaCan: Canning with Community

A year ago, Mason’s shy smile made its debut in the cyber lane, as the beloved icon of IthaCan, an online home food preservers’ network located in and about Ithaca, NY. During its first year, 215 home food preservers have joined ranks online to share insights and know-how on IthaCan’s website. Over two thousand unique visitors have dropped in as well, generating nearly 50,000 visits to the site.

IthaCan’s website was created in 2009 to help the people of Tompkins County, NY, meet up with others in the area who are interested in preserving food at home. Members don’t have to be experts to join up, just have a willingness to learn and connect with like-minded people.

With 19 affiliation groups, in addition to canning IthaCan covers a fleet of diverse topics of interest to home processors, such as brewing, livestock, wild edibles, cellaring and cheesemaking. Photos from members, guest blogs and links to how-to videos round out the fast-paced discussion board.

But what makes IthaCan unique as a social network is that it also exists in “real time” too. IthaCanners hosted or participated in dozens of hands-on events in the community this past year, building the collective knowledge base of this essential skill set and bolstering household resiliency for its members. At its heart, IthaCan is a group of friends and neighbors getting involved in their local community, not just at publicly attended fairs and workshops, but also by meeting (often for the first time) in each other’s homes for peer-to-peer skill sharing sessions preserving food.

In fact, most of IthaCan’s events are sponsored by members and are held in small groups in their own homes. The website facilitates these sessions by providing a communication and registration vehicle, so folks can, as IthaCan’s promotional poster states: “Gather. Share. Make food.” For example, in March, 2010 a group of nine IthaCanners met to make “Winter Jams” and in April a half dozen members will gather to make fermented sauerkraut, in May there will be gatherings for hard and soft cheesemaking.

IthaCan grew out of a concern for building local infrastructure as a response to energy descent and its founders believe preserving food at home is important, because it:

• Is critical to the development of the local foodshed
• Builds community resiliency
• Encourages household self-reliance
• Can contribute significantly to individual efforts to lower carbon footprints
• Is a wonderful way to network with others, to learn and share.

The quest to strengthen the networking begun in IthaCan’s first year continues as it launches a new set of food gatherings for 2010, organizes a Jar-a-thon, and collaborates with Authentrics, Inc. [owned by the author and her husband] to develop and pilot an innovative internet widget to connect local farmers and home food processors funded by a Northeast SARE Sustainable Community Grant.

Fueled by the dedication of its volunteer administrative team and the interest of its members, IthaCan has accomplished much its first year. So Happy Birthday, Mason..and many happy returns!

CAA Contributor Katie Quinn-Jacobs is a life-long home food preserver and self-sufficiency gardener. Prior to creating and managing Prepared Tompkins (launched in 2006) and IthaCan (launched in 2009), she served as the President of a successful local software development firm, ReQuest Technologies.  In 2009, she founded Peasant Dreams Farm, located on the East Hill of Ithaca, NY.  As the 2nd child in a family of ten, she spent most of her summer days during her developing years weeding, picking and blanching vegetables at her childhood home in the Hudson Valley, where deep, rich topsoil is real, not just something people aspire to or read about in glossy gardening books.  Today, in addition to raising fruit, nuts, lamb, chicken, eggs and vegetables on meager topsoil at her Ithaca homestead, Katie also raises three sons with her husband, David.  In her spare time, she enjoys writing and wishes she had more time to hang with the sheep in the west paddock overlooking the pond.