# Food Jars



## ironmountain (Dec 23, 2010)

Does anyone collect "new" food jars?  There are tons of food jars at the inlaws farm. I kept all of them aside but brought home a couple.  I can get pics if need be, but mostly (so far) stuff like Local labeled pickled herring.  Sweet Seventeen company...  jar embossed like a barrel.  Fruit jars with floral or grapevine embossing on the jar.  Alot of 50's-70's stuff. Just curious if I should be keeping these to sell off or if I should just put them in the recycle pile...thanx!


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## coreya (Dec 23, 2010)

pictures tell a thousand tales. Lets see em!


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## ironmountain (Dec 23, 2010)

Pickled herring jar:


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## ironmountain (Dec 23, 2010)

closeup of herring cap:


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## ironmountain (Dec 23, 2010)

Boden Western juice container:


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## ironmountain (Dec 23, 2010)

Mattson's apple butter:


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## ironmountain (Dec 23, 2010)

new jars I know, but there are tons of them out there...relish/ketchup/mustard etc etc....haven't even gotten close to the old stuff yet...still working on the bottle dumps that are easily distinguished due to the massive amounts of bottles/jars piled on top of the ground next to trees..so haven't dug beyond 2feet yet..


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## coreya (Dec 24, 2010)

Most of the new jars are worth zip but look for figurals and odd shapes and sizes  or labels and you may stumble on a jewel. There are jars from the 30's and 40's and before that are very hard to find due to limited production. Post a pic and someone on here will let you know. The apple is neat but is common, also the lids can be a good find. JMHO


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## ironmountain (Dec 24, 2010)

Thanks for the reply/info coreya!!!   I'm sure I'm going to have a ton of pics to post in the upcoming 15years or so...
 The arrow on this map is the center of family farm..been around since 1800's..I can hunt from our property all the way west to Lake Superior and north to Lake Superior...Most of it is either family friend private lands or CFR...It's going to be quite a few years of metal detecting old logging trails/camps Native American camps/trails and bottle digging old abandoned camps and houses ....

 http://maps.google.com/maps?q=47.173804,-88.708949&num=1&t=h&sll=47.15611,-88.69806&sspn=0.015176,0.032015&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=47.17507,-88.709278&spn=0.041133,0.111494&z=14


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## cowseatmaize (Dec 30, 2010)

> Mattson's apple butter:


 That could so easily pass for White House if you didn't find the lid. I just looks so close the the apple vinegar's. Were they related or just riding the White House wave.


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## towhead (Dec 30, 2010)

LUCKY YOU IRON MOUNTAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Sounds like a blast!!!! -Julie


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## ironmountain (Dec 30, 2010)

Cows: I'm thinking that Mattson's is a Upper Peninsula Local brand.  I'll look into it though and see....

  The family farm where I'll be hunting really is going to be a humongous task. Wish I knew ppl closer to come help.  We're talking 180 acres of family farm that dates back to the 1800's... 1 privy from the 30's still standing that I can knock over and 3 others near the house that are gone but I now know the location of.  

 Two dumps that date back to the mid-late 1800's that are huge, and luckily, covered in sand. Always wondered if those were just holes dug from clearing and building up the logging trails. Mother in law said those are the original house dumps from when the house was built.  Both are 40yds across by 60yds long or so. Big deep depressions in the ground full of sand and wispy grass. Kind of like when you're at a sand dune at a beach. I'd assume that grass etc never grew well there because of the huge pine trees that surround that area.

 My daughter and I found an old well that is full of bottles. 20' deep or so, we only dug 2' down and found a ton of what used to be called midget beer bottles. I'm wondering if people who home brew would sterilize them and use them? all in perfect shape and I have close to 500 of them already.  We stopped digging that one because near the old berm root cellar we found another few hundred bottles near a couple trees. Looks like an old fire pit that people just tossed stuff into. I found a few marbles, an old Big Ben pocket watch (trashed and busted up except the case and movement) and more liquor bottles, aspirin bottles, vicks etc...

 Staying on topic (I tend to be quite verbose), about 1/4 mile behind the house on the path to my hunting area, there is a dump on the side of the trail. Well, there are 4 or 5 dumps. One is full of old fridges and stoves(including old enamel and iron stoves...going to pull those out this summer as well as the 3 old pickups from the 50's) and misc stuff.  This dump is nothing but jars. Fruit/food jars scattered all over. Many of them still with food in them lol...well, a black squishy mass of liquid, not really food. 

 I don't know if I can even estimate how many Ball/Mason/Presto/Kerr jars there are. I know I was walking into there and it felt like I wasnt sinking in the soft dirt at all, I looked down and realized that under the sand there were massive amounts of old bread bags (from local company defunct in the 50's) and garbage bags and gunny sacks filled with these jars.  I brought home 1 bagful and that had 14 jars in it. I'd estimate 400-500 jars or so, if not more. 

 These are the basic aqua colored Ball Perfect Mason jars.  Number 13's, shepherd crooks, small embossed number 3's and 6's etc..and the big chunky embossed numbers. They were on top of the pile and I snagged them....

 Pardon the lengthy speechifying (i loves me some andy griffith), but it's winter and they have 3' of snow on the ground up there (although the ground isn't frozen so next time i'm up there i'm hitting the privy dig) and having discovered all of this stuff, I have to wait til April to go dig crazy.


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## dygger60 (Dec 31, 2010)

Would be nice to come across something like that....I, myself, go for the jars....I use to dig alot up in the Adirondacks in NY state.  Had a blast and some great finds.

   I live further down state now...but the great thing is some of the homesteads around here date to the 1700's...I am trying to get to know the people so they will let me take a look around their property .

   During the this time of year I am going to the local historians office. There I have found some old maps of the area and can get ideas of where the older homes use to stand.....and this spring I am heading out to see
 what I can find.

   David


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## ironmountain (Dec 31, 2010)

nice dygger. Many of the people I talk to on metal detecting forums I belong to live in southern NY and they find some insane stuff. Alot of the guys/girls just trek off into the woods and find old foundations/farms/homesteads and they come back with quite a few civil war relics etc. I'd be surprised if you couldn't find some relics/bottles at those old farms/homesteads.  And I agree about doing research right now.  Winter is perfect research time. (although this winter is weird. We normally have -30 temps and biting cold winds along with 2-3' of snow on the ground..and it's 40's and warm rain...go figure) I spent quite a bit of time at the library in the local history room and I've found old sites that used to be bottling companies from the 1800's and old ski jumps on the backside of abandoned mines etc...kids and I are going to be busy in town this year also I guess...


 This past summer daughter and I did research about the man made small lake behind our house. It now has a soccer field and playground at it. Back at the turn of the century it had a huge pavillion for swimmers. We found old pics of it and I looked on google maps and saw a faint outline of where it used to stand plus the trail down to the water. That led to us finding an 1877 walking liberty CC in phenom shape 6" down.


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## ironmountain (Jan 5, 2011)

The apple butter jar is from a local company. I have an Orange Crush brown Krinkle bottle that says "mattson bottling co. hancock, michigan"...nummy...herring and orange soda.


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## dygger60 (Jan 6, 2011)

Nice find....on the 77.    

    Alot of times I use the old Tax maps....or locally written books.  What the coolest thing is finding one of the old logging towns that sprang up for a few years before dying out.

    Isnt nothing like walking through the woods and coming upon a partial clearing with spotty houses all around...most have fallen in...but every once in awhile one will still be standing....let the hunt begin.

    A practice around where I am now is folks use to put up stone walls to mark their land....you can drive down some of the original roads and the oldest barely visible from being over grown or falling down.  Those are the ones  I will be visiting this spring.


    David


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## ironmountain (Jan 6, 2011)

yah..I love finding clean green large patches of grass in the middle of nowhere in the woods and flowers blooming...kind of a telltale sign lol...

 there's a house near the family farm I'm going to go digging in. I'll be md'ing the outside and digging the privy etc...but the house has 1/3 of it sliced off...imagine a block of cheese and cutting 1/3 of it off...you can see right into the house, see the old table and chairs, dishes on the drainboard etc.. father in law said that's the "old" farmhouse that was there when his mom was young...she's 86 now..he said nobody cared if i went into it or if i pulled the '39 ford out of the woods behind it......needless to say...winter is cruel...so cruel..


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