It’s a chicken and egg thing – which came first, pandemic-induced gardening or the subsequent shortage of canning jars and lids?
Did pandemic food shortages and the need to shop less frequently but for more at a time lead to shortages of freezers or was that due to supply chain and then manufacturing interruptions when the country was shut down?
Either way, both freezer and canning supplies are in short supply. Coming on the heels of reported seed and seedling shortages (veggie starts seemed plentiful in the Mad River Valley between von Trapps, Fancy Plants, Vee’s Flowers and the abundance of plants available at the Waitsfield Farmers’ Market), people have turned to home gardening for both food security and to keep busy.
In June and July and even into August, canning supplies could be found locally. On Saturday, September 12, there were 13 boxes of wide mouth pint jars at Mehuron’s. Those are gone and shelves at Bisbee’s, Kenyon’s and Shaw’s are empty as well. Kenyon’s had some four-packs of fancy half pints not that long ago and Bisbee’s had some small mouth quarts.
“They’ve been out of stock for a while. We’ve only been able to get weird-sized jars. Most practical sizes don’t exist. I assume it’s the same as any in-demand product. Plus, there’s way more people at home and that puts stress on staple items. I don’t know if it’s a production issue, but it could be. As other parts of the country are looking at lockdowns again the supply chain is going to be stressed again,” said Bruce Hyde Jr. at Mehuron’s in Waitsfield.
At Bisbee’s in Waitsfield, John Wilson said he can’t order canning supplies. He said that ACE Hardware did give an availability date of the first week in October and said he’d ordered as much as possible.
“Earlier this summer we ordered a pallet and a half and they were gone in a week,” Wilson said.
“Everybody and their brother grew a garden and they’re canning,” said Doug Kenyon at Kenyon’s Variety in Waitsfield.
Kenyon said that they had anticipated heavy demand for canning supplies and had ordered accordingly but the jars flew off the shelves. s for the shortage of freezers, Kenyon said he waited two and a half months for one. And beyond preserving food, local restaurants have been selling cocktails-to-go in Mason jars as well.
At Tatro’s Appliance in Barre, a spokesperson said that freezers had been on back order since April. Tatro’s (on September 29) had just received two chest freezers, one is 17-cubic feet and the other is 10-cubic feet. All other freezers are back ordered to December 23.
At Express Appliance and Kitchens in Burlington, it’s the same story with existing stock of freezers sold out since March. The Express Appliance spokesperson said it was a shut down in manufacturing with factories at half capacity and supply chains interrupted as well as increase demand.
Freezers are coming in very slowly at Bouchard-Pierce Appliance in Berlin where shopkeepers expect them to be on back order for months.
Online shoppers won’t have any more luck finding freezers with large retailers like Home Depot, Lowes and Sears completely sold out. Canning jars can be had online, but at a price. A box of 12 wide mouth pint jars with lids and rings was available for $44 from Amazon. A similar box, purchased at Mehuron’s was about $11.79.
