Beef Cannery in North West Ohio
Through the years, thousands of volunteers and some 120 MCC canner operators have made it possible to can more than 38 million pounds of meat for hungry people across the globe. We know this is only one of the thousands of MCC meat canning stories that could be shared. Got your own canner story to tell? Share your story here. (Top photo: Circa 1946, the portable cannery is set up for business near Harrisonburg, Virginia. Photo courtesy of Dean-Kaylor Studio.)
It is midnight in Hartville, Ohio. The winter chill along with the dark sky silence the town. Most people are fast asleep, but for Jerry Breneman, one of two canner operators for MCC, there are only the beginning signs of the day coming to an end.
Breneman checks back on the hundreds of cans, filled with beef and pork, cooling on the wooden shelves. Some of the cans are labeled, while others still lack the "In the Name of Christ" stamp, a sign of a busy day with no more labels left. As the cans, just taken out of the pressure cooker, continue to cool, Breneman takes off his gloves and boots, hoping to get some rest before starting up again tomorrow.
A snapshot in Breneman's memory, this is just another normal day during his two years spent with the MCC mobile cannery serving through alternative service from October 1965 to 1967.
From October to May of both years, Breneman traveled about 6,000 miles, through 33 communities, in nearly five months, operating a mobile cannery with the purpose of sending donated meat overseas for relief through MCC.
Traveling from Kansas to Pennsylvania, New York, Michigan and Oklahoma, Breneman oversaw the canning of over 149,000 cans of beef, pork, lard and broth the first year and 173,000 cans the second year.
But the idea for meat canning came before Breneman, even earlier in MCC's history, at the camps of Civilian Public Service (CPS) during World War II.
MCC, along with Brethren and Friends, administered CPS camps for conscientious objectors to war. Food canned by church members across the country was sent to help feed the young men serving in CPS.
Meanwhile, needs in war-torn Europe continued to grow, and MCC worked to respond. Again, donations of home-canned goods from the gardens and farms of supporters across the U.S. began making a difference.
But the glass containers often broke on the journey across the continent and sea, and soon volunteers were exploring how to can meat in metal containers, which required special equipment.
A portable cannery in the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia was built in 1945 by the Shenandoah Equipment Company and privately operated, though still supporting the work of MCC.
In Hesston, Kansas, the South Central Mennonite Conference in 1946 oversaw the construction of a mobile cannery, which was turned over to MCC in 1952.
The Virginia cannery was built from a wagon and usually transported by a tractor. While in its first year it was taken to canning sites in Newport News, Virginia, and transported by truck to Ohio, it was primarily used for canning in the Shenandoah Valley. The Hesston mobile cannery was built from a semi-trailer chassis, allowing it to travel further distances around Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.
In other places, like a former tomato cannery south of Smoketown, Pennsylvania, volunteers from Amish and Mennonite churches gathered to can donated beef, pork and chicken, remembers Mel Glick of Smoketown, who recalls coming to the multistory cannery in 1947, when he was 14.
"On the lower story, there was a big steam boiler," said Glick. "The equipment was actually run with a steam engine and water pumps. On the next floor was the canning equipment. That was also where they slaughtered the beef and had the big copper kettles where they cooked the meat, hundreds of pounds at a time."
In different areas and regions across the U.S., volunteers gathered to can meat – beef, turkey and chicken. Byproducts such as lard and broth were occasionally canned for local organizations or sent overseas.
In the beginning years, MCC's meat canning operations and especially the portable meat cannery faced skeptics and challenges. A meat canning factory on wheels had never been attempted. Industry professionals said it was impossible and not worth the effort. Still, people believed in the idea of donating meat to be prepared for food relief overseas and continued to offer their support.
As the 1950s pressed on, the idea of meat canning caught on and continued to grow. The mobile cannery built in Kansas traveled outside of the South Central Conference region for the first time in 1953.
A crew of young men was recruited to operate the cannery, traveling to locations in the U.S., and later Canada, for a season that ran from October through May. And that is a tradition that has held through the decades, first with a two-person crew, then with a crew of three starting in the 1970s, and a four-person crew starting in the 1990s.
"When you think about it, we put these four young men together on a crew and give them a credit card, a mobile cannery and a schedule and say, 'GO,'" current canning coordinator John Hillegass said. "We do not know what challenges might be in store, but we face them together. If equipment breaks down, we have no choice but to fix it and keep going. Sometimes we work late, or all night, but we can't stop until all the meat is canned."
Breneman, who lives in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, today, has fond memories of traveling with Hillegass's father, Robert Hillegass, who served as a canner from 1966 to 1968.
Together they operated the mobile cannery from 1966 to 1967, fulfilling alternative service assignments as conscientious objectors while partnering with communities to can meat for the world.
"Between vinyl gloves, four buckle arctics (rubber boots) and coveralls, that was our official uniform," Breneman said.
Each stop brought a new opportunity to meet volunteers as they canned meat together, and Breneman was fascinated by the unifying passion for one cause despite individual differences.
"They might be in separate places Sunday morning, but when it comes to supporting MCC and the food project, they were able to do it," Breneman said.
Even now, decades later, the camaraderie, service to others and witness to community still stand out as key aspects of that time.
"I like the idea when people could actually work together," Breneman said. "It didn't matter if they had a beard or didn't have a beard, or if they had the horse over here and the car over here, for at least one day or one week they could come together and work together."
The meat, slaughtered several days before the canners' arrival, was brought out of cold storage. It was deboned, thrown into the meat grinder, heated and stirred, sealed, cooked in a pressure cooker, labeled and packaged – all in a day's time.
Breneman found a new respect for communities that came alongside the operators and helped can meat for hours on end, turning out despite snow or storms – or "hail or high water," as Breneman said.
"They knew they were working for a church project," he said. "They were willing to go the extra for it."
John Hillegass remembers traveling to Chambersburg as a teenager, helping his church can meat by stacking cans in the basket when they came off the sealer.
"You really learn what it means to go and do something, the value of hard work," Hillegass said. "You know that behind every blessing and every gift there are a bunch of people that have really good ideas and aren't afraid to put them into action."
This discovery is one that continues to motivate Hillegass as he oversees the meat canning operation at MCC.
From glass jars to tin cans, donated meat to purchased meat, MCC meat canning has witnessed a fair amount of changes, but there is still nothing else like it out there.
"It's unique in a number of ways," Hillegass said. "It's the only mobile cannery in the world."
All of the meat is donated. And, aside from Hillegass's work as coordinator, it's almost completely driven by volunteers – from a canning crew of MCC service workers to all the people in various communities who spend hours arranging for donations and processing of meat, in addition to the actual work of canning.
"Without volunteers' hard work and donations, the mobile cannery is truly impossible," Hillegass said. "I'm not sure how something similar would get started in today's world. It grew out of a desire to meet a need back in the late '40s, early '50s and has continued to grow and prosper since then."
And the result is striking. Since 1946, some 38,429,432 pounds of meat have been canned, providing needed food for hungry people across the globe through MCC.
The tradition of MCC meat canning and the mobile cannery is in Hillegass's blood.
"My great-grandfather helped build the first mobile cannery in Hesston," Hillegass said, "and he also donated some of the first heads of beef to be canned when they were first trying it out."
Like his father, Hillegass served as part of the MCC canning crew, from 2004 to 2007, and began his work as MCC's canning coordinator in 2010.
In that time, he has seen every aspect of meat canning – from being on the road and fixing broken equipment to meeting hundreds of volunteers to traveling to places such as Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ukraine where MCC meat has been shipped.
"Now that I've served with the mobile cannery for over 13 years, I see its inner workings, its complexity and the work that goes into everything behind the scenes," Hillegass said. "I am still in wonder that such a unique project with so many moving parts can work. But it does. It can be challenging, but it is beautiful to see communities come together in the name of Christ."
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Source: https://mcc.org/centennial/100-stories/canning-meat-hungry-world
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