Hey guys, we're in the middle of May and for me, canning season is right around the corner.

As I was getting prepared to share with you my latest online course, Harvest to Kitchen,

where I take you into my kitchen and show you how I water bath can, pressure can, dehydrate, freeze, all of that,

also some harvest tips, I asked my Facebook group,

what intimidates you most about food preserving? And I was actually kind of surprised,

well, maybe not, but the most common fear had to do with safety and not poisoning your

family with your efforts to can your own food. That was actually very, very common.

And I started thinking about my first years as a home canner, and I remember having some of

those fears as well. It just seemed strange to be following these processes and putting these jars

on a shelf, assuming that they are going to be safe to eat. But I got over those

fears, and I want to help you get over those fears as well, because actually getting poisoned

by botulism, which is the risk here, with home canned foods, is actually very rare. I looked on the CDC's website at the actual cases

of botulism with home canned goods and they stated that from 1996 to 2014 there were

43 outbreaks from home canned vegetables. I mean, think about it. That's, that's a course of almost 20 years,

and that's a course of thousands, if not more, jars of canned foods from canters, and only 43

outbreaks. Now, that's still 43, and that's still concerning, because this is a very, very serious thing.

But if you look at the percentages, which I haven't, you can imagine that that's a pretty small

percentage.

But how do you not become one of those small percentages?

Well, let's talk about going back to what the CDC actually said about this.

And I think this is the key to making sure that you are canning in a way

that is the safest and also just to ease your fears that you can do this. So this is what the CDC

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