More Gathering

This week, we have been doing a bunch of gathering, and will continue to do so over the next couple of weeks. We want to stock up on storable feed for the pigs and rabbits. This year has been so dry that we have no idea what the prices and availability of animal feed will be like over winter.

We drop Leo off at Kinder garden and then go to our friend's place (he has a beautiful property near ours, which has over 5000 apple trees and a bunch of water and thus weeds). We load the truck up with either grass and weeds or apples. We dry the weeds to make hay, but the apples are a little more complex.

This past week, we gathered about 500 lbs of apples. We have dried about 30lbs so far in our solar food dehydrator. We made another 30 or 40 lbs into apple sauce and chunks for apple pies, which we have frozen (we also pureed some of the sauce and froze it in ice cube trays for Nico - he loves them and the coldness seems to feel good on his aching gums). We are fermenting a bunch in a 30 gallon tub for the pigs, and they also get fresh apples, while they wait for their preferred vinegary ones.

Over the next day or so we will be making our first cider and then vinegar. Cider is a good way to preserve apples, plus it gives a leftover pulp that we can dry for the animals. We'll let you know how it goes. On the other hand, we don't really drink much (if at all), so the sudden arrival of delicious cider may impair our typing abilities for a while to come. Be patient.

Solar Food Dehydrator and food preservation

This week, Abe made us a solar food dehydrator, an essential component of any self-sufficient homestead. It has a see-through top and front, metal sides, and space for 4 trays, 4 feet by 2 feet each. It has screened air vents at the top and bottom so that hot air rises up through the produce, pulling out the humid air and thus speeding up the drying time. It is great. We got a couple of hundred apples from a neighbor the other day, so it has already paid for itself. We can dry 40 apples at a time in two partially cloudy days. For photos of the dryer being made, click here.


Anyone that has a garden knows that when something is producing well, you have way more than you need or want. For example, the first squash of the season are so exciting and so tasty, but after eating squash every meal, every day, you're almost happy to see the plant dry up.

The key with this imbalance of food is to preserve it in some manner or other, so that you can eat it during winter. There are several ways to do this, each with their own advantages.

Drying is my favorite, as it conserves a lot of the original nutrition and taste, and I consider it safer than canning (which might just be that I'm fairly new to canning and am a little afraid that I won't do it right and will end up poisoning my family!). You can then store the dried produce in cans, bags, containers, whatever. They don't take up much space and will last a long time (provided that you dried them properly). We use the dried fruit as snacks, eaten as is. Vegetables can be rehydrated in soups or eaten like chips. It is truly amazing what you can dry, and how well the flavor is preserved.

We can some things. Canning keeps the moist quality of your produce. For example, we pickled and canned some cucumbers a couple of weeks ago. They are delicious, and everything, including the dill, came from our homestead.

We don't have a freezer yet, so not an option for us, although we would probably only freeze meat, and only for a short amount of time.

Another great way to have fresh food in winter is to grow things that naturally last, like winter squash. I still have one winter squash left over from last year! We have now collected the first of our pumpkins.

We are still slowly building up our homestead, and each year we increase our systems. We look forward to having the pantry ready for next year and being able to fill it in the main growing season.