GALION – A Galion grad inspired by her roots has launched a canning company – and landed a book deal.
Chelsea Jenney O’Leary, who now lives in Nashville, Tenn., started Wiley Canning Company last year, an online business named after her grandmother, Trudy Wiley Ruehle. Her canning knowledge and recipes are also being published in a cookbook due out next summer.
“Canning food really honors my family, especially the maternal side,” said O’Leary, a 2008 Galion graduate.
“It feels important and honorable to do it, but there’s this existential reason for doing it too. It just kind of checks two important boxes for me.”
O’Leary, 31, said she grew up savoring her Grandma Trudy’s canned peaches, green beans, and strawberry rhubarb jam, all lovingly made from garden-fresh fruits and vegetables grown on their Lykens-area farm.
She spent many days at the farm, climbing up on the combine and devouring her grandma’s homemade chili and chocolate chip cookies. As time went on, she also came to appreciate the value of canning and was inspired to carry on the family tradition – and form Wiley.
O’Leary said Wiley’s mission is twofold – to create and share favorite canning, preserving, and pickling recipes with other online followers and to teach, which she does through private lessons as well as through ZOOM workshops to students all over the country.
“The Science of Canning” and “The Art of Preserving” are just two of her popular workshops. “Teaching is a big part of the business for sure,” O’Leary said. “It has been going really well. I knew I loved to teach and wanted to teach people, but it has exceeded my expectations.”
“The Wiley Canning Company Cookbook,” although initially in her five-year plan, was actually launched sooner by the publisher, Blue Hills Press in nearby Whites Creek, O’Leary said.
“That definitely surprised me in the best way. It’s just all really exciting, and I just feel really fortunate.”
Her home kitchen is regularly featured on Wiley’s website and Facebook page, along with photos she’s taken of strawberries, apples, tomatoes, and other produce from area farmer’s markets.
She loves testing new recipes and also writes a weekly newsletter for her company.
Naturally, her pantry is brimming with canned goods – applesauce, tomatoes, blackberry lavender jam, and satsuma rum marmalade, a recipe that will be featured in the cookbook.
The refrigerator is always stocked with pickled onions, a staple in omelets, tacos, burgers, and soups.
O’Leary, who graduated from Otterbein University with two degrees in 2013, is married to Galion native Dr. Jared O’Leary. They have a one-year-old son, Sullivan.
The busy mother and business owner admitted she’s passionate about “something that sounds so simple.” She wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Wiley, rooted in my family’s history, traditions, and values, is my ode and ‘thank-you’ to all who came before me,” she says on her website. “It is my way of carrying forward all that I treasure about my family’s approach to living and loving.”
