SUNBURY, Ohio — Snow covers the ground at Glass Rooster Cannery, but there are some things the cold can’t hide, like the friendly woman smiling in the doorway or the abundance of art hanging on every wall. Sunshine pours into every corner of the cannery, whether it is through kindness or crafts.
For owner Jeannie Seabrook, this is where memories are made and learning is easy when fostered through the right person. Seabrook teaches a range of homesteading classes at the cannery, from soap making and canning to making bread from scratch and cooking new cuisines.
But the cannery’s purpose is more than teaching people a new skill — it’s about leaving with a better appreciation for the craft.
“Some people will decide, ‘This isn’t so bad. I like the result that I get when I do it myself. I am going to do it for the rest of my life.’ Then you have some people who say, ‘Oh, this is kind of cool.’ They’ll do it three or four times and then enough is enough.” Seabrook said. “Then there’s the people who say, ‘Oh my gosh, now I’m willing to pay way more when I know what goes into getting a quality product.’ That is what canning does for you. It’s about what’s going into our bodies. We only have one of those.”
How it started
One day, 15 years ago, Seabrook rushed over to her sister Susie Schmidhammer’s house with an idea. She handed Schmidhammer an article on wartime community canneries.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Library, community canning centers became popular during the Great Depression and World Wars in most rural areas. These canning centers provided cost-efficient pressure canners to residents and trained them on how to can properly.
At that time, Seabrook worked at a law firm and had her own homestead, but opening up a cannery was a dream. She said to Schmidhammer, “I think I know what I want to be when I grow up.” Right away, her sister offered up her residence for the business.
In November 2010, they broke ground on Schmidhammer’s four-acre property. Schmidhammer, an artist who primarily worked with glass, decorated the place while Seabrook designed the kitchen and gathered utensils. The sisters also created a garden with heirloom varieties to start.
The cannery opened in May 2011, and Seabrook began by teaching home-preserving classes like how to can and ferment food using products from her garden. By the fall of 2012, Seabrook obtained a canning license from the Ohio Department of Agriculture to sell canned products.
As they worked on building up the business, Schmidhammer and Seabrook continued to transform the property. Schmidhammer converted a barn, used to store grain at the time, into her art studio. The sisters also refurbished a larger barn to be a wedding venue for Seabrook’s daughter in 2012 — the barn is now open for weddings throughout the year.
“We’ve seen a number of nieces and nephews get married here and have baby showers,” Seabrook said. “It’s really been a family gathering place in addition to everything else going on.”
Expansion
Over time, Seabrook expanded her class offerings to meet customer requests such as making mozzarella cheese or bread from scratch. She now offers 28 classes, including everything from making boozy jams and lip balm to learning the art of sourdough and Greek cuisine.
Kim Burke, a resident of northwest Columbus, recently took the Artisan Pasta and Bread class with a group of friends. She enjoyed how helpful Seabrook was as an instructor.
“I’ve taken other cooking classes, (but) the setup seemed to allow for more one-on-one,” Burke said. “Right at the moment, I didn’t have to track her down or anything. She was right there.”
In addition to group classes, Seabrook offers classes for corporate retreats, as well as clubs and school field trips. After taking the pasta-and-bread-making class, Chastidy Sours decided to book the “Working with Yeast: Pizza, Cinnamon Rolls and Bread Class” for her daughter’s Girl Scout Troop.
“You could ask her questions that getting a recipe or even a video online doesn’t allow for,” Sours said. “My personal experience with her was wonderful, and so I really feel comfortable with the girls going and having a good time.”
The Glass Rooster Cannery has seen groups from all walks of life. A family traveled from Missouri for a class, and, one time, a group of Chinese exchange students learned and stayed on the property — Seabrook began renting out two spaces next to the cannery in 2020: a three-bedroom house and a studio apartment.
A helping hand
Seabrook soon realized her business could not only educate people in the art of canning but could repurpose unmarketable food that was otherwise considered waste.
In 2016, a farmer came to Seabrook with a problem: hundreds of pounds of hot peppers. The farmer had no market for the peppers and asked Seabrook if she could do something with them. Together, they created a spicy sandwich pepper and hot pepper jelly for the farmer to take back and sell.
Produce must meet certain criteria to be sold in the grocery store like size. If the produce is slightly under the required size, the food is thrown away or composted.
“Somebody brought me a whole load of tomatoes that were all 2 1/2 inches and they need them to be 3 inches. (These) beautiful tomatoes were going to be composted,” Seabrook said. “I can take care of that here and give them a marketable product and slow down a lot of the waste happening from the farmer’s side of things.”
So, she created the Farmers Sustainability Program where farmers can bring their extra produce, have it canned, buy it back for a fraction of the retail price — based on the work and ingredients that went in — and sell it for a profit.
Farmers bring new recipes to Seabrook often, which she’ll develop and eventually sell on her own shelves, once approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Today, she has over 30 recipes approved, from tomato sauce and apple butter to chili starter and cowboy candy — sweetened jalapeño peppers.
Local farms she cans for include Richland Grow Op in Mansfield, Ohio; Sippel Family Farm in Mt. Gilead and Evans Family Ranch in New Carlisle. In addition to helping farmers reduce waste, Seabrook works with the Ohio CAN program to donate a portion of her canned products to the Southeast Ohio Foodbank and Regional Kitchen.
Remembering the past, embracing the future
Throughout it all, the most challenging part of running the cannery has been doing so without the help of her sister, Schmidhammer, who passed away in 2018.
“I am the visionary, I’m the let’s think big and do it fast person, and she was the brakes: ‘Hey, why don’t you slow down and think about what you are about to endeavor,’” Seabrook said. “We were a really nice balance for each other, and I had to figure out what I was going to do to create that balance without her. And the truth is I haven’t. But we try things, the same way Susie and I would.”
Even though Schmidhammer is gone, her presence is felt in every corner of the property. The Glass Rooster Cannery was Schmidhammer’s art studio. She made sinks out of antique desks, cut pieces of glass to make a collage of hummingbirds and flowers and took two summers to create a sculpture of wine bottles cemented together to resemble a flower.
Seabrook continues to expand the business they created together and someday soon hopes to get new equipment to can low-acid foods like soup. As she looks toward these new endeavors, her goals for the cannery remain the same: educating others.
“We are going to be dead and gone by the time the world suffers through a lot of the things that are going to emanate from climate change and how we treat our planet. But if we can postpone that by teaching the next generation a little bit about stewardship responsibilities, to not throw things out the window or to only use one paper towel instead of eight, that’s our little contribution, to teach them what a tomato really tastes like,” Seabrook said.
The next person to take a class could be a future CEO, Seabrook added. “If they can develop an ethic for caring for the planet, that’s going to make a difference in the businesses that are built.”
(Liz Partsch can be reached at epartsch@farmanddairy.com or 330-337-3419.)
