Yes they can
Thomson Cannery preserbes food, tradition
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Jersey Johnson pushes peas through a shelling machine at the Thomson cannery.
Photo by Jim Blaylock
Jersey Johnson fed the green peas into the large metal machine. In seconds the peas shook down the chute, the purple and green husk flew into a galvanized steel bucket.
The peas were then washed inside the basin of a large industrial-sized sink, then divided into store-bought freezer bags.
After a while Robert Pettis arrived at the Thomson Cannery, swinging wide the screen door to retrieve his freshly shelled and bagged peas. The effort will pay off long after the pods on the vine have wilted, Pettis said.
"All I've got to do is go in the freezer and pull them out and I have fresh peas," he said. "I'm surprised more people don't do this."
Before it closed earlier this month, the Thomson Cannery was open from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the summer. People brought their tomatoes, snap beans, butter beans, peas, fruit and other vegetables - even soup - to be shelled, bagged, blanched or canned.
The cost for quart cans is 40 cents per can, and 5 cents per pound for shelled beans. Johnson, a vocational agriculture teacher at Thomson High School, and two of his students operate the cannery during the summer. The students, Johnson said, are paid through the Job Training Partnership Act program.
This handfull of shelled peas, grown earlier this summer, will be canned so people can enjoy garden-grown vegetables weeks or months from now.
Photo by Jim Blaylock
On a July Thursday, the customer traffic was slow but steady and Johnson was manning the cannery by himself.
One woman stopped by to ask if Johnson could process peaches.
"Yes, but you have to peal, slice and take the pit out first," Johnson told her.
First-timer Mary Dozier brought a bushel of peas her son gave her to the cannery to be shelled and bagged.
"How much do I owe you?" she asked, picking up her three bags.
Johnson tells her, "It's a dollar even."
"That's the best news yet," she said, pulling the bill out of her wallet.
The Thomson Cannery is one of 36 community canneries operating in the state, according to the Georgia Cooperative Extension Service. Most are affiliated with local high schools.
The cannery began operating in the early 1940s under the guidance of J.A. Maxwell, a former agriculture teacher who went on to become a long-serving superintendent of the McDuffie County School System, said Roy Yelton - who recently retired as assistant superintendent of McDuffie Schools. The county built the facility to be used as a cannery.
The Thomson cannery has been in operation for over 50 years.
Photo by Jim Blaylock
During World War II, Yelton said, parents would bring cooked pork and beef to the cannery. Once it was canned, they would send it to their children fighting oversees.
"It's not as popular now as it used to be, but it's served a good purpose over the years," Yelton said.
Like a white-haired old farmer, the cannery's age and experience shows on its silver-coated tin roof, white clapboard siding, 10 windows, screened doors, cool concrete floor and sheet-metal covered table tops.
The county still owns the Whiteoak Road facility, located beside the McDuffie County Department of Recreation and Leisure Services. There's no sign out front, and if you didn't know what it was, you've probably driven by it a thousand times.
The machinery inside is large and archaic, though Johnson said pieces, such as the can sealer, require little maintenance and still have their original belts. Besides the shellers, there are large copper kettles where the fresh produce is heated before being poured into cans. Once a can is sealed, it is then placed into a pressure cooker to be heated again.
Grocery stores sell canned goods for less than a quarter, but it's just not the same, Johnson said. It's the taste of summer that keeps the cannery open and the people coming back year after year.
"A lot of people like growing their own vegetables," he said. "If you've ever had stuff canned from your garden versus stuff you buy from the store - there's a big difference."