The buzz of activity at Helmuth Repair last Friday had nothing to do with repairing or selling farm equipment. Owner Floyd Helmuth volunteered the use of his business, located west of Kalona, as the location for the Mennonite Central Committee’s (MCC) canning operation.

Vernon Ropp, who represented Sunnyside Mennonite Church and the MCC Board on the committee that made arrangements for the event, said more than 120 volunteers would be involved in canning 8,000 pounds of turkey thighs before the day was over. Other members of the committee were John A. Yoder, representing West Union Mennonite Church, Ed Miller, representing Kalona Mennonite Church, and Eldon Nisly, representing the Old Order Amish.

“We told people to be here at 4 o’clock this morning,” Ropp said. “I figured we’d get started about 4:15 or 4:20, but there were 21 people cutting meat at ten minutes ‘til four.”

Working in shifts of 40-45 people, 4,460 quarts of meat would be cut, canned, labeled and packed in cases before they finished at about 10 p.m. Friday evening.

Vern Preheim of Newton, Kansas, regional staff person for MCC’s central states region, said most of the turkey, which was purchased with money donated by area Mennonite churches, will be sent to troubled areas overseas. In 1999 MCC sent 134,400 pounds of canned meat to Albania to feed refugees from Kosovo, 201,600 pounds to hospitals and schools in North Korea and 120,730 pounds to Russia, in addition to smaller shipments sent to other places in need. In the past three years MCC has shipped more than 1.7 million pounds of canned meat around the globe.

“We try to respond mostly to emergency situations,” Ed Miller said. “We are sensitive to local markets.”

The canning operation came about during World War II when a local business in Virginia and a relief committee in Kansas each built a portable canner to process meat for shipment overseas. In fact, according to Preheim, half of all private aid to Holland following that war came from Mennonite Central Committee.

Today’s canner is mounted on a semi-trailer and has the capacity to process 3,000-4,000 quart cans of meat per day. Three MCC volunteers take the canner to 32 locations in 11 states as well as Ontario, Canada, from October to April each year. Last year, it was used to process 291 tons of meat.

All meat must be inspected and Verdis Koehlmoos, a federal meat inspector on the Iowa City circuit, was present during last Friday’s operation. One can from each batch of meat was incubated and will be tested in 10-days time. If, as is expected, it passes inspection, the almost 4,500 cans of meat will leave Helmuth Repair and be shipped to wherever the need is greatest.

Friday was the first time in almost 50 years the canner had come to the Kalona area.

For more about the canning operating, see Kalona Cooks.