Working at the Dry Pack Cannery

I had the opportunity to go with members of the Griffin Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to the dry pack cannery today. I went in late Septmeber this year and procured a large stock of long term packaged basics for my needs; such as red wheat, oatmeal, white rice and powdered milk. Today I was taking several non-member friends who are affiliated with me on the American Preppers Network, Georgia State Group. I told my friends that though the canning process could be a bit messy, the whole experience would be rewarding and fun; and it was.

My friends were coming from several different directions in the Atlanta area so we all met at the cannery located in Tucker, Georgia, on the east side of Atlanta. What a gloomy cold day Saturday was, temps in the low 40’s and drizzle to down right rain most of the day. Late afternoon even brought heavy fog, not a good day for travel but none the less we all were there ready to work at 8:30 am. I was honored to be asked to give the opening prayer for our groups efforts. The building felt chilly at first but we soon warmed up with the activity of stocking our canning stations and the actual labor of canning.

Our bulk order supplies had already been pulled for us and sat awaiting proccessing on a large wooden pallet. Sanitized tubs held our number 10 metal cans for filling with the variety of dry food stuffs we were preserving. A few of the items our group dry packed were: Black beans, Pinto beans, White beans, Oatmeal, Dried onions, Powdered milk and Cocoa Mix, White Rice and Macaroni. We worked steadily to accomplish our task as another group was scheduled to follow us at 10:00 am. Right on time we finished and did our clean up by washing out the tubs, wiping down tables and equipment and sweeping and mopping the work areas.

The canning proceedure was broken down into individual station activities performed by workers . The cans were filled with the food item to be packaged, an oxygen absorber and lid added, then the cans were sealed on the canning machine. Cans were then passed off to be labeled with the name of the food inside and date of canning. The processed items were stacked in the order processing area where prefilled order sheets for each person were selected and filled. Orders were placed in cardboard boxes which held 6 number 10 cans each, labeled with the contents and purchasers’ name. The whole process went off without a hitch and soon we were ready to load our efforts into our vehicles.

I posted a couple of photos of me working in the cannery. One of my friends that came to work today is a professional photographer and took many pictures. She is burning me a CD so I will have lots of photos to scrapbook, yahoo! Once again the camera does not like me and I look rather silly; but as a

 

scrapbooker I take what photos I get gratefully and use them to document my life and to share with family and friends. I hope I don’t really look as homely as the camera portrays me, and if I am…well I do have a good spirit.

Comments

[Gill]

I am intrigued to know why you can items like rice & oatmeal. I would just store them in bags. Is it perhaps because you get things like termites that might eat through the bags?

We are having another very cold spell here in the UK. Only a couple of inches of snow at the moment, but we stocked up at the supermarket on Saturday in case we get a lot more snow. Just hope our Christmas visitors can get here.