By JIM KINNEY
Business writer
SPRINGFIELD - For home canning enthusiasts, juicy sun-ripened tomatoes from the garden are the taste of winter.

"It's fun," said Daniel J. Staub, of Springfield. "It makes you remember summer when you open that can."

Staub and his wife, Kristin M. Brennan, plan to put up 80 to 100 quarts of tomatoes by the end of harvest season plus an additional 50 quarts of apples, peaches, jams, jellies and other assorted foodstuffs, enough to keep Brennan, Staub and their three children ages 6, 3 and 7 months supplied until the next harvest.

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Staub will teach one of 11 food preservation techniques sponsored by the Northeast Organic Farming Association/ Massachusetts Chapter all from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 19. His will be at his home at 127 Marlborough St. in Springfield. Other Western Massachusetts seminars will be that same day in Shelburne, Cummington, Northampton and Great Barrington. The cost is $50 for people who are not members of the association and $45 for association members. More information is available at www.nofamass.org

Besides canning, he'll cover drying, pickling, freezing, the use of a root cellar and ways hearty greens like kale and collared greens and root crops like carrots can be kept right in the garden under a blanket of mulch. Staub said he'll also teach a food storage method called lacto fermentation, the traditional method for making sauerkraut.

"Anybody who gardens knows that there are times of the year when you are just inundated with stuff and times when you just have nothing," Staub said. "Food preservation is a natural outgrowth of that."

And it is getting more popular, according to a survey released last month by the Web site allrecipies.com. The number of Web page views of canning instructions rose 109 percent in the past year, and 55 percent of the American home cooks surveyed planned to can something this year, according to that survey.

"I know there is a lot of interest in local food, so it follows that people would want to preserve that food," Eric A Decker, professor and department head in food science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said. "It's the economy. But people are also looking for a level of control. If you grow your own food, or have a supply of organic food, you can have that food year-round."

Staub said the actual canning costs only 15 cents a can for either a new lid or a new rubber seal for the kind of jar that comes with a glass lid. Even cooks who buy the produce from local farmers save money.

"Because you are buying in bulk and in height of the harvest season when supplies are high," he said.

Decker said canning acidic foods, like tomatoes, pickles, jams and jellies is a relatively easy process. But if you are canning vegetables like green beans, you need to use a pressure cooker in order to get the food and the materials hot enough and sterile enough.

"The fear is botulism," he said. "There is actually a magic pH, 4.6, below that you are OK."

Staub said he'll only cover high-acid foods in his canning seminar.

He encouraged people thinking of getting started to read the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Center for Home Food Preservation Web site at http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/index.html

Jim Kinney can be reached at jkinney@repub.com