KALONA

Volunteers traveled from as far away as Kansas City to help can thousands of pounds of chicken when the Mennonite Central Committee’s mobile canning trailer docked at the City of Kalona’s Maintenance Building on Dec. 7 and 8.

Arlis Diener and his wife Marsha made the trek up from Missouri for the second year in a row, combining their canning shifts with a family visit. The experience has been “great,” he says while packing cans into boxes at the end of the assembly line.

Up the line, Marsha applies green labels to the freshly washed cans.

Across the room, Becky Widmer makes sure the snack tables are stocked for when volunteers are ready to take a break. She’s helped with the canning enterprise in the past, but this is the first year she and her husband have served on the committee. Jon is nearby, helping with the operation that includes cutting the meat into chunks; weighing the meat into cans; sealing, pressure cooking, drying and labeling cans; and packing them into boxes.

“It’s amazing,” Widmer says of the MCC’s relief mission, which provides people all over the world with important nutrients that they wouldn’t otherwise get in their diets. “When we were first married, we lived in Brazil for two and a half years. We were with the Mennonite Central Committee, and we gave out meat at that time. So, I really believe in this, I really believe in this mission.”

Even though that was decades ago, seeing firsthand the difference the canned meat made in people’s lives had a lasting impact.

Last year, 383,040 cans of meat were shipped to countries in need; more than half of those went to Ethiopia (192,000) and a significant number to Ukraine (58,560).

Although the initial plan called for 17,000 pounds of turkey to be canned in Kalona, it ended up being swapped out for chicken, presumably due to its lower price. Beef and pork are the other meats the MCC cans at events around the country.

The MCC has been canning meat and providing relief since 1946.