Starting your own Preserving Traditions group

Before you start

Guiding principles

All groups wishing to use the “Preserving Traditions” name or the “Yes. We Can.” logo, please contact Emily Springfield (preservetrad@gmail.com) before doing so.

To call your group a “Preserving Traditions Branch,” your group must commit itself to:

  • Providing hands-on workshops (not just demonstrations) of traditional food preparation and preservation skills such as canning, pickling, and cooking from scratch
  • Support local food producers as much as possible by encouraging patronage of farm markets, “you-pick” farms, home gardens, CSA subscriptions, and direct farm purchases
  • Developing skills, community, and shared resources, not cash profit

Beyond that, the exact setup of each branch is flexible to meet your needs. You may meet monthly, quarterly, summers-only, etc. You may be housed at a Grange or other local institution. Minimal reporting is needed, though we’d love to have you report on events via blog or e-mail.

Finding participants

You can find people interested in canning and preserving in a lot of different places:

Folks will come to your group for a lot of different reasons, but they all have food in common! It’s a great way to bring seemingly different groups together to find common ground.

Finding presenters

The person coordinating the workshops should be comfortable teaching some of the basic skills (water bath canning, pickling, baking, general cooking) but doesn’t need to be able to teach every workshop. You can even plan workshops depending on who’s around you to teach! Here are some ideas:

  • If there’s a small mill in your area, ask the miller to come talk about flour.
  • Go to the local fair and contact the top three jam-makers.
  • Ask the home economics teacher at your local high school to teach canning.
  • If there’s a Master Gardener program in your area, contact them and tell them you’re looking for someone to lead a vegetable garden planning workshop.
  • Go to the farmers’ market and ask a friendly, talkative farmer to discuss his produce or honey.

Where to have workshops

Preserving Traditions began at the Pittsfield Grange near Ann Arbor, Michigan. Our first choice for new PT branches is to hold them at your local grange. Originally, the Grange was a fraternal organization for farmers and other rural folks, but today is open to anyone supportive of rural issues and interested in building community. Common Grange activities include potlucks, food preservation, and social events like country dances, and Granges usually have the large kitchens open spaces that are needed for PT events.

If there is no active Grange in your area (search for a local Grange here), you might consider locating your PT group at a food co-op, school kitchen, church, or commercial kitchen. Keep in mind that whatever space you use, you’ll need:

  • Space to work and tables or counter space to work on.
  • A large, well-equipped kitchen: sinks, stoves, ovens, large bowls, utensils, colanders, cutting boards, etc.
  • A stove with at least 6 burners, or 2 standard household stoves, or space for a number of portable burners

What to teach

You may follow the Ann Arbor group’s schedule, or modify it to suit your needs and the teachers you have available. Do tie your schedule to the local food seasons; don’t make strawberry jam in December if you live in North America! The Ann Arbor group sees fresh produce from June through October or November, so we try to do our baking and meat-based events in the winter so we can work with fresh produce all summer.

Here are a few workshop outlines to get you started:

About money

Group funds, including donations and proceeds from the sale of “Yes. We Can.” merchandise are used to cover ingredients, facilities, and group-owned equipment. No one’s making a profit on this group!

We are committed to ensuring money is not barrier to joining the group. We ask folks to throw a $5 donation into a coffee can at each event, but if you have to pay for hall rental, you might need to ask $10 per person – which is still affordable for most folks. You might also have a sliding scale of $2-10, depending on what people can afford. By asking folks to bring their own ingredients, you also let them control their costs, and you make sure the group isn’t stuck with ingredients it can’t use.

You may have fundraisers for your group so long as all the proceeds go to support the group. Official PT branches may have the “Yes. We Can.” logo printed on shirts, aprons, bags, etc. and sell them as a fundraiser. (Note that the local group is responsible for all aspects of such fundraising, including fronting the money for merchandise, dealing with inventory, and finding outlets for sales.)

Technical matters:

The Internet is an essential tool for getting the word out about PT events. You may also wish to post flyers and publicize events in non-electronic ways, but e-mail and web sites are vital for efficient, free communication.

Required:

  • An e-mail account that is used for group activities ONLY. I strongly recommend a gmail account, but you can use whatever is handy for you. The goal is to keep this account separate from your personal account in case, at some point, you pass administrative duties for your branch along to another person. Keep track of your PT contacts through this account, and be considerate – don’t spam your mailing list!
  • Google calendar. Request a Google Calendar account to go with your gmail account. Use the calendar to post events as far into the future as you can confirm them. Be sure to include a link to your location so we know which site is hosting the event. Emily will “subscribe” to all of the event calendars and display them on the “master” Google calendar at http://preservingtraditions.org/calendar.html .

Optional:

  • A blog, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc. You can get the word out however you think will work best for your audience. It’s also nice to write up each event within a week or so to let the folks who couldn’t attend what your group is doing. I am happy to add you as an author on the Preserving Traditions blog; you’ll  need a Wordpress account to do so.
  • RSVP software. You’ll want to track who’s coming to your events, capture e-mail addresses, and manage a wait list for events. I use www.sign-up-sheet.com. I’d use the “invitation” feature on the Google Calendar, but at this point, it doesn’t let me cap how many people can attend, which is crucial for some workshops. If someone has a better solution for this issue, please let me know!