Money We Save By Canning Our Own Food

When people see our work canning they question why we do it. The amount of work that goes into it is very intimidating in a world where we have everything at our fingertips in a grocery store.  It’s super easy to explain the nutritional benefits. It’s homegrown and we know exactly what is going into our food. What’s more difficult to explain is the dollar amount behind what we do. It’s easy to lose track of how much you did and what things cost.  However, this year I’m finally breaking down how much money we save by canning our own food.

Store Bought Comparisons

I’m comparing everything that is store bought from Azure Standard. I realize this isn’t always the cheapest option. However, if we were buying these products we wouldn’t be getting them from the dollar store. We would be investing in quality food still and that makes the comparison more accurate. The prices shown below are as of September 2023.

Grape Juice

Grape juice at Azure is $8.45 for 32oz.

We paid $70 for our grapes and we added some sugar ($7.60 for 5lbs). We had jars and lids on hand. 

We ended with around 90 quarts (32oz). That would have been $760.50 if we purchased an equivalent product from the store. 

Making our own grape juice saved us around $690 😳 

Grape Jelly

While we are still talking about that grape juice, we used some of it to make grape jelly. Since we already accounted for the cost of the grapes, this is just pure savings! It’s not a lot but as they save over at threerivershomestead- every little bit counts. 

Grape jelly is $4.77 per jar at Azure. 

We made around 8 half pints of jelly, which is almost $38 in savings. 

Spaghetti Sauce

Spaghetti sauce at Azure is $7.33 for a 25 oz jar.

We made around 50 quarts and our cost was that of the plants- we’ll call it $50 due to some blunders in our garden season.

This would be around $464 worth of sauce. So our savings here is around $414. 

Green Beans

One can of green beans at Azure is $1.71.

Our only cost was seeds, around $4. We ended with around 100 pints (possibly more we lost count there were so many).

That’s an easy savings of around $171.

Tomato Sauce

Tomato Sauce is $2.11 for 15oz.

We made around 40 quarts and the cost of our plants was already taken into account. 

This one saved us around $180.

Enchilada Sauce

Enchilada Sauce is $3.31 for 12oz on Azure.

We made around 48 pints of sauce and, again, the only cost was tomato plants which we already accounted for.

The savings here is around $212. 

Pizza Sauce 

One jar of pizza sauce at Azure is $3.52 for 15oz.

We made around 18 pints and saved around $60.

Potatoes

The potatoes are a little hard to navigate so they will be a rough estimate. 

A 5lb box of potatoes is $13.21. 

We get at least 100 quarts of potatoes plus several casseroles that go in the freezer. I’m estimating around 200 lbs of potatoes as our harvest. We pay roughly $75 for seed potatoes so there is a cost associated. 

This is around $450 saved (and that is definitely a conservative estimate).

Salsa

Once again, our tomatoes are already accounted for in the costs listed above. This one is going to be all savings!

The cheapest jar of salsa on Azure is $5.28 for 15.5 oz. 

We made around 30 pints of salsa which is a savings of around $164.

Total Savings

Drum roll please. It’s time for the total amount of money we save by canning our own food. If my calculations are correct we’ve saved around $2400. This is across four households though, so average savings is $600 per year. It doesn’t seem like a lot but it all adds up. This was also a “small” canning year for us. I anticipate this number will continue to go up throughout the years as we continue to grow more and preserve more.

Not Included

This doesn’t include apple sauce, apple pie filling, apple juice, BBQ sauce, ketchup, strawberry pie filling, pumpkin, or spaghettios. In other years we’d also can pickled peppers, okra, relish, pickles, peach slices, pear slices, and pear sauce. We didn’t get to these this year because we had a newborn during harvest season and our pear trees didn’t produce this year. With all these things included I’m sure our total would be nearly triple what it is now. 

In Summary: Money We Save By Canning Our Own Food

It’s sad to say that $600 doesn’t get you a ton these days, at least when we’re talking about groceries. However, if you’re someone who is trying to become debt free it makes a difference. If you’re on one income, it makes a difference. Even for us, it makes a difference! We have goals to be able to stay home with our family year round and we won’t get there by grinding away at a 9-5 corporate job. Plus, each year we can a little bit more than last year and try new things. Our BBQ sauce and ketchup are still being tweaked so that they are perfect. If we can nail those down and continue making them our savings will go up quite a bit more.