Well local pears finally went on sale.. In the end, I put up 40 pints of pears, five pints of pear juice and feed out a good amount of cooked trimmings to the both the chicken flock and the pig..
There are more over on a different counter but you get the idea.. I thought.. hmm, how am I going to turn a day of pear making into a post of the blog.. I got it.. lets find out if I saved any money..
So these are all based on my local jars prices, how long I tend to keep jars for, the cost of lids that was bought by the case on sale, sugar was also bought on sale and I made sure I am doing as much canning as possible on the weekend to get the lowest power costs for the stove as I can get.
So each pear cost me 29 cents, and it took 3 pears approx. per jar for pear cost per jar to be 87 cents.
Cost breakdown.
- Jar – .10 cents (one I buy jars on sale, two I look after my jars and they on average last me at least 10 years, I also try to find jars at second-hand store etc.)
- New Lid- .11 cents ( I am dreading when I use up my large stock pile and have to replace it with today’s current lid prices, if I had bought new lids yesterday it would have cost 16 cents a lid instead of .11)
- Power costs – .7 cents per jar
- Sugar- 5 cents per jar (Only because we were able to get a good sale on sugar this fall. The sugar has been running about 1.50 higher per bag at full price)
So that brings my total costs to 1.20 per Pint.
Now I know that if you bought a pint jar of canned pears at the farmers market locally, you are looking at six dollars a jar.. so that would mean a savings of 4.80 cents per pint, or a total of 192.
But lets switch over to the store.. the large can of pears at the store that is Del Monte is current at 2.69 plus our tax for a total of 3.03
So my 1.20 a jar of pears now saves us 1.83 X 40 jars means that we saved 73.20
I would do it just to control how much sugar is used, knowing that its fresh local Ontario pears and so forth.. but the savings is nice as well.
Ps, yes I know that I am not paying myself for my time but then again, I am also not trying to figure out the difference in buying local pears, processing at home and in jars etc vs the costs of canning in a different country, not local fruit.. shipping the cans by road.. you get the idea at least I hope..
I know that the output to get all the canning gear costs but those are sunk costs for me at this point. I know that for someone just starting out that this would need to be included but I think they should still consider breaking it down over the years and over the jars life 🙂
Happy Sunday to you all..
Just another Day on the Farm 
That’s a stellar amount of savings, I know exactly where you’re coming from. I just put up 34 quarts of beef stock using the bones from the steer we took in. (Total cost on kill,cut, wrap worked out to .94 cents a pound – everything from prime rib to shank etc). I roast the bones for a day with dried herbs from the garden, red wine a lady gives me for free. Cook in water on top of the stove second day, strain and can. I still have enough bones to do that twice again – I will likely pass them along to another lady that likes to make bone broth. Because I take ALL the parts of the steer – some of those costs are covered – I got ten pounds of beautiful suet off that steer. I guess I consider the beef stock next to free….I own the jars, grew the herbs, did them on the wood cookstove which is on anyway this time of year. I almost don’t count the cost of raising the steer – our milk cow gets bred with a beef bull every year – and at a year old the steer is more beef than we can eat. The cow pays for herself and the steer several times over in butter, cheese, milk anyway and definitely covers the cost of what the steer eats. Butter here is 4.00lb, milk around 5.00 gallon, cheese – 15.00 kg at Costco. Just in butter alone I get a pound a day off that cow.
Ultimately, I think it’s a mindset when it comes to food storage and stocking up. I offered a few people suet for free – no takers 😄
I love that “its a mindset” I agree.. Great deal on your beef calf and you are doing very well with your milk cow. that is the one thing about my sheep, while I can make sheep butter it takes a good amount of milk to make that pound of butter where with a cow its a lot easier
It’s funny how some people never factor in all the ‘hidden’ costs of store-bought foodstuffs.
I am not even sure how to start factoring it all in.. the trucks, the roads, the metal for the cans, the liner for the cans, the distance traveled and so forth.. It does all count to the cost.. but I am not sure how many folks really think it though.