mcc canning

  • By Tami Lange Mosser
  • October 14, 2013
  • 567
                        
It was enough turkey for more than 1,000 Thanksgiving dinners and the people who receive it doubtlessly will be thankful for it, whatever the day. It’s a long three days for Relief Canning, Inc. in Kidron, where volunteers will work from before sun up until after sundown to cut, cook, can, label and box 10,000 cans of turkey, destined for parts unknown around the world where the Mennonite Central Committee is in service. The work takes place in the Gerber Building, behind Central Christian School. The building was constructed in 1978 using donations and volunteer labor and was named in honor of Daniel Gerber, an MCC relief worker kidnapped by Communist guerillas in 1962 while working in Vietnam. Gerber’s brother “still comes in once and a while to can,” said Relief Canning board President Jesse Hamman. And so do others, hundreds of them. This year’s canning started Friday, Oct. 12 and continued on Monday, Oct. 14 and Tuesday, Oct. 15. One 92-year-old woman is a regular, Hamman said, while local Amish schools send their students to work as part of their service project. Ideally, Hamman said, the three days will be completed with help from 350-400 volunteers. There’s a lot to be done. Long hardwood table are covered with turkey, which is cut into 1-inch pieces, unless, Hamman said, it gets so busy that a grinder also can be used. After that, cans full of meat are pressure cooked, then cooled enough to be moved to tables where the cans are checked for dents, then wiped down, labeled, dated and packed. All of this happens under the watchful eye of a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector, who continues to work – though without pay – while the Federal government remains on partial shutdown. While the Kidron volunteers can once a year, Andrew Keeler will be hard at it for two full years as part of his service to MCC. Keeler, from Bluffton, is part of a four-man canning crew that will travel to more than 30 canning sites each year for a two-year term. Now in his second year, Keeler said Kidron is just his second stop. “It’s a long road ahead,” he said, that will take him to 13 states and two Canadian provinces. Prior to his service term, Keller said, he’d never seen the canning program operate. Now, he said, he and his three co-workers travel from site to site and stay with families who open their homes to them. “We have to tolerate each other,” he said, laughing. “But we get along pretty good. We’re all doing this for the same reason. We have to keep that in mind.” During the most recent MCC fiscal year (April 1 through March 31), a total of 514,512 cans of meat were shipped to 13 countries. The biggest recipients, Hamman said, were North Korea and Ukraine. The remaining countries include places are far away as Zambia and as near as Canada. And some cans are used in the U.S. as well. The annual canning schedule includes not only Kidron, but stops in Sterling, Middlefield and Berlin as well. In addition to the actual caning, Hamman said, volunteers provide food for the workers and businesses provide donated materials. The turkey is shipped via donated trucks and drivers from the Virginia Poultry Growers Co-Op, where Hamman said he was able to negotiate a slightly below-market price. Relief Canning raises money to purchase cans and boxes and pays to have the finished product shipped to Akron, Pa. for distribution. Hamman himself came to the canning project after a teaching career that lasted nearly four decades. He credits his board with keeping things running smoothly and said every year he will see many familiar faces and always, some new ones. “There’s enough need being now on even basic news stories” that volunteers recognize the necessity of the project. In three days, Hamman said, the building will be filled with people from the Mennonite, Amish, Apostolic and Nazarene faiths, as well as congregants from churches and school scattered throughout the region. Canning has been going on for decades, according to Marcia Lewandowski, who spent her time overseeing operations in the wipe down and labeling tables. In the World War II era, glass jars were used. Locally, canning was started in a barn on the farm of Mae Ramseyer’s father-in-law’s barn. Sides of beef were butchered then, she said, and the fat used for soap making. Floor supervisor Ethan Lehman said he was drafted by an uncle and used to help with the soap making. Now he arrives at 4:30 in the morning to get every prepped and ready for the volunteers. Both Hamman and Lewandowksi had high praise for Ferne Mumaw, who makes sure there is plenty of food for the volunteers. “She’s got common sense and history both,” Lewandowski said. Although Lewandowski has worked with the Kidron group for a few years, she has seen first-hand how the project works. She and her husband, Rory, worked with MCC Bolivia for eight years. Not only will the meat go to good use, she said, but the cans will be used as water containers. In many countries, she said, people can put any material to good use – even making knitting needles from old bicycle spokes. After getting so much from support from the MCC while in Bolivia, Lewandowski said, working with the canning project seemed only natural. “All those years, they supported us,” she said. “We wanted to give back.”


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