Harvest is not a single event at the end of summer. It begins the moment the first greens come up in May and continues through October. Every week something is ready, and every week there is a choice: eat it now, give it away, or preserve it for later.

Most of it gets eaten or given away. The rest goes soft in the fridge, gets left too long on the plant, or ends up in the compost.

This introductory seminar is about changing that.

Cindy Suelzle has spent decades growing food in Edmonton’s short season and working through exactly this problem. In her kitchen, summer smells like berry jam and September smells like drying herbs and apple juice. She has tried most methods, abandoned a few, and landed on practical approaches that work in a Zone 3 climate with a normal kitchen and a normal budget.

In this session, Cindy walks through the main methods for preserving food, the shelf life and nutritional trade-offs of each, and how to match the method to what you grow.

She covers common mistakes, food safety basics you need to know (including when and why to use a pressure canner), and the one principle that determines whether preserved food actually gets eaten or quietly expires on a shelf.

This is not a single-skill class. It is an overview of all methods.

Whether you are new to food preservation or already canning and fermenting but want to fill in the gaps, this seminar gives you a complete picture of what is worth preserving, how, and for how long.

For hands-on skill building, explore Cindy’s canning, fermentation, and jam making workshops at OFRE.