Fingers crossed; this is going to be another great year for San Joaquin Master Food Preservers. There are two new co-coordinators, Kathy Anderson and Colleen Young, that have lots of ideas to get you excited about participating in the program. We have plenty of ideas to keep you involved and we want to hear from you too.

Bill Loyko, our retiring coordinator, has put in his time and now is planning to spend time with his wife traveling and enjoying life. When he mentioned retiring, Kathy and I decided we couldn't see our Master Food Preservers go down because of a lack of a coordinator but not being sure either of us could handle the task by ourself joined together and so here we are.

SJCMFP's just finished a long weekend helping out UCCE State Coordinator Susan Mosbacher present a three-day lab for some of the Virtual Delivery students for the graduating class of 2024. It started Friday night with dehydration and freezing. On Saturday we pressure canned and they learned to use both water bath and atmospheric steam canners. Sunday, we wrapped up with fermentation, pickling, and spreads. It was tiring for all, but it was a great opportunity for the new coordinators to become acquainted with working with Sue. We had five volunteers from SJCMFP and we worked hard and helped train a group of ten new MFP's. The VD's (they seriously need to change that name) will be doing mostly online presentations and answering helpline questions. They generally do not have a local county MFP program.

We have a lot of ideas and are looking for even more suggestions. Because we now have several gung-ho Spanish speakers in our group, we are planning to have Spanish workshops throughout the year, hopefully quarterly. We would also like to do some group activities during our monthly meeting so if you have suggestions we'd love to hear them. Nicole George came up with a great idea after working this past weekend is to have a 2-day Preservation Boot Camp. We have a request for a workshop at a church in Lodi later this month.

A little bit about me, Kathy will tell you about her in the next newsletter. I live in Lodi, outside of town a couple of miles on farm land that has been in my husband's family for over 100 years. They have grown walnuts, cherries, wine grapes and more in that time, since my husband was the farmer, we only have wine grapes now. In my past I was a legal secretary and now I'm seem to be a professional volunteer. I volunteer at the Lodi library teaching Microsoft software programs, I've been a Master Food Preserver since 2018, a Master Gardener since 2022, and I am still associated with a legal professional association that I have been a member of since 2002. I am a widow (I hate that word), a mother, grandmother, and a pet lover. I love making quilt tops, gardening, volunteering, food preservation, and being with like-minded people. I'm excited about this new adventure and I can't wait to know everyone better.