Why everyone’s hoarding Mason jars
My grandparents in what is now Belarus grew everything that is possible to grow and canned most of it. Pickles, tomatoes, carrots, strawberries, cherries, apple juice - those were all in the cellar. Ever since we were little, my brother and I were expected to help, squeezing apples, destemming strawberries, pitting cherries, and helping with cooking. The soviets didn&#x27;t have Mason jars. My grandmother used 3 liter jars with flat top, you needed to get special lids with rubber gaskets, and a special tool that had a big disk that went around the top of the lid, and a rotary handle that moved a hand around the circumference of the lid, physically bending it around the gasket and the lip of the glass jar. It would result in a good seal, but to take it off, you bend the lid and couldn&#x27;t put it back on. So the soviet economy had white plastic lids that you would put back on the top of the jar, kinda similar to those colorful Pyrex ones we have here.<p>I live in USA now and my grandparents are dead, but their legacy lives on. I&#x27;ve been actively canning for about 15 years, maybe more, and my children now help me and my wife with cherries, strawberries, tomatoes, pickles, peaches, apple sauce and various marmalades. It is a great family activity and a great way to have your own food in the winter. My sons even make money selling the leftover syrup for making lemonade. It is completely non-scalable in terms of costs, I once made some calculations that to make money off the jar of strawberry jam I&#x27;d need to charge something like $50 (jars, bands, fruit, sugar, lemons, heat + time). So we talk about this with my children as example of why the high-volume automated food production makes the food so cheap.<p>At any given time, I have maybe ~220 jars in my home +&#x2F;- a dozen in whatever direction. Most hold preserves, the ones that do not hold things like nuts, dried fruit, rice, beans, spices. We give out jars - pickles, strawberries - as presents, and although some come back to us, many do not, so I have to replenish my supplies. I definitely noticed this year&#x27;s shortage, but it wasn&#x27;t too dramatic in my area, it was similar to what I see every year around harvest time.<p>One of my favorite places to get jars is my thrift store. They have the most random collection of jars. Few years ago I scored 3 unopened cartons of Bell jars in a REALLY dusty state. Once I opened it, the QA card inside had a production date of 1953. The lids and the bands were heavily corroded, but the jars were fine and once washed, undistinguishable from the modern ones, save for the minor details in design. When opening one of the jars, I smelled the 1953 air inside and for a moment, it felt quite different. Then it escaped and entered 21st century.