Op-ed: Let’s Preserve Our Communities Through Canning Food
October 01, 2025 | Source: Civil Eats | by Jillian Fischer
Set in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, surrounded by rolling farmlands and hardwood forests, Glade Hill Cannery often opens before the sun has risen. On one such early morning, expert canner Ronald David supervises the pots of apple butter that bubble on the stoves, fogging the windows with steam.
“Anything you want cooked, I can cook. I can cook dirt,” jokes David, who has operated this community cannery for the last 30 years, guiding his neighbors through the steps of preserving their own food—from cooking the raw ingredients to sealing them into jars.
Known as the “Moonshine Capital of the World” for its distilled alcohol production during Prohibition, Franklin County, Virginia, has a robust agriculture economy as well. Glade Hill stands as one of the oldest surviving canneries in the country, with more than 80 years of preserving, jarring, and steaming under its belt. The cannery operates in a 1940s-era masonry building behind Glade Hill Elementary School, and allows locals to can just about anything they want—though so far no one has taken David up on his dirt offer.