Boy chefs strut their canning stuff to the women of WWI
Struggling to preserve all that food from your victory garden? Then make way for the boy chefs. Every day they are prepared to teach classes on canning. They have even added an evening class to meet the high demand for their instruction. These boys know how to can “faster than a machine gun turns out bullets,” so they will certainly show you a thing or two!
Preserving food during WWI was a valuable skill to have, especially when preparing for the long winter. With the men off at war, harvest season was particularly busy for the farmers’ wives, who had limited time and help with picking and preserving their crops. Women from the city took classes on canning and then headed out to the striving farmers, both ready to get to work.
WWI canning poster
Many women canned at home, but community canning centers popped up all over the country as well, which made accessibility very simple. The popularity of canning continued to increase as people realized how economical and convenient it was. Not only did they have affordable and available food in the winter, but they didn’t have to go to the market as frequently. Little did they know that their efforts were preparing them for even stricter rationing as the Great Depression and WWII stormed into history.