solar dehydrating update

Now that we've done some dehydrating, here is what we've found with the design.

As I mentioned in the prior post, the design I used was not the product of some company or solar design engineer, but the result of homesteader ingenuity. 

So far, were have dehydrated greens and fruit. Collards and lacinado kale were blanched before dehydrating, and they dried quite well, in less than one day. Apple and peach slices both dehydrated well, and are now stored in glass jars. If it's cloudy or you don't get the fruit in the dehydrator first thing, it might take two days. We just leave the fruit in the dehydrator overnight and have had no problems. After they are dry, we store in airtight glass jars.


Our "summer kitchen", blanching collards on the propane cookstove.

The dehydrator has four individual trays that can be taken out for loading with food or for cleaning. We found that sugary food like peach slices will stick to the stainless screening, so we used the plastic screens from our electric dehydrator on top of the  stainless screen. Plastic sticks less, and is easier to clean up in the kitchen sink. 

Picture shows kale that has been blanched and the center rib cut out, starting the drying process.

Some observations: 
Occasionally an ant has found its way in to the dryer area if it's cloudy or overnight, but normally, if the sun is out, it is so hot insects don't go in. 

The temperature and air flow is not quite as good in the lower two sections. This is actually handy for drying herbs, in which you want a low temperature. For fruit slices, we just switch top and bottom trays half way through so they finish equally. I don't yet have a temperature probe, but plan to get one, then we'll know how hot the two levels get.

Next year, maybe we'll try jerky. The two dehydrators have now been taken down and stored in the barn for the winter.

tender young trees

This past late spring, I attended a workshop on foraging wild edibles. I'll do a post on it later. One of the points stressed for many foods was to harvest when young and tender. The young shoots, leaves and stems all will have milder taste, are easier to eat and digest, and are easy to pick. 

It turns out that we were being informed of a fact that every herbivore on the planet already knows.

And so it goes here in Wisconsin, where the deer, rabbits, mice and voles all look forward to the tender new plants we humans grow with seeds, or poke in the ground as seedlings. Of special concern to me are all the trees I have been planting. Most are bare root seedlings, which are only one year old when planted. A few of the nursery purchased fruit trees are older, but still tasty apparently. 

I'm no expert, but it is obvious that at some point, the bark is sufficient barrier and no longer attractive to these animals, as once trees get beyond a certain size, they are not girdled or killed ( no beavers around here).

Until that time, I have been protecting my young charges with various methods. 

This apple tree is getting the deluxe package, with hardware cloth protection against rabbits and mice down around the first 16" (400mm) of trunk, the reinforcing wire cage to ward off deer, and cardboard mulch weed suppression. I even have the rainwater drip irrigation strung to it now, but it's not quite functional. I'll describe that another time.

This oak, started from acorn, had the sod flipped, placed around the hole to form a depression so watering will stay and soak in, and the small cage for deer and partial rabbit protection. It is getting watered occasionally this summer till its roots can develop below all the annual grasses.

Other trees I've planted don't get quite this nice treatment, and many don't ever get watered. 

All the hazelnuts and chestnuts from 2012 were planted dormant bare root with a mechanical seedling transplanter and got the spiral plastic trunk wrap for winter mouse and vole protection . No watering, but are mowed next to several times during the summer.

Since there are well over 2500, in rows out in our field, the time and cost to do more protection:  tree tubes ($) or weeding ( time, aching back) or watering (equipment, heavy well use) have made the low input, low effort management style an easy choice.

I planted some more chestnuts ( 120) this spring, but they were tubelings from Badgersett, and would be more vulnerable to dry times, so we have been watering and hand trimming around them as the summer rains slowed down. We did no cages though, so have had some deer predation. They were planted similarly to the oaks. We'll put on plastic spirals before winter sets in.

I also planted the start of a hedge experiment ( why are there no hedges in the U.S.? Any info I've found is from the U.K.) The osage orange and hawthorn were bare root seedlings  and got planted with a dibble. I've weeded a couple times, but no watering. They are far from the house. I'll do an update on the hedge next spring, when I see how many make it though one winter.

Our rabbit fence, or The Maginot Line redux

We are in our sixth year gardening here, and the first full season while actually living here. Over this time, we've slowly been upgrading our infrastructure, learning from our mistakes, and getting a bit better at growing our own food.

Last year, we spent quite a  bit of money to put a combination deer/rabbit fencing around our two main garden plots. We used eight foot fence posts, cattle panels and rabbit fencing to show those critters who was boss. A bit hard to see in the the photo, but the rabbit fence is the lower 24", and the cattle panels extended up to around seven feet above the ground.

The deer got the message, and besides there is a cornucopia of green growing things all about and surrounding the garden anyway. 

The rabbits did not get the message. 

But my beef is not with the rabbits. Rabbits will do what rabbits do.  No, I'm ticked at the fence manufacturing industry, and their obvious drive to compete with the cheapest design possible, and still call the product a rabbit fence. 

In theory, rabbit fencing has wire spacing that is close enough in the lowest strands, with slowly widening spaces toward the top, so that rabbits can't squeeze through. 

The problem is, that the widening is happening much too soon and too low, so that rabbits hop right through it. We've seen both little spring tykes and full grown rabbits get through ( not under), with devastating results to our beans, which they love.

Next possible solution(s) 
plant a "trap crop" outside the fence- say some soybeans for them to munch on. Would have to churn up some more of the deep pasture sod to do so.

Put one more layer of fencing along the upper half of the rabbit fence, where the problem seems to be.- more cost and hassle.

Snares,traps, other lethal schemes inside the fence- I'd rather not, as it is wasteful and one more thing to monitor and maintain.
For now, it looks like we are still going to get a decent crop of dry beans, so maybe we just live with it.

Anyone else find that rabbit fence doesn't serve the purpose?

Solar food dehydrating

Preserving food is essential for those who want to maximize home grown food year round. So far from our garden, we've canned a lot of stuff, put up a lot in the freezer, have dehydrated veggies in our Excalibur, and I even tried fermenting and made a batch of kraut.

To really reduce energy use in food preservation, solar is the way to go. There are a lot of designs to choose from, but I built our dehydrator based on the design developed by the homesteaders at
http://www.geopathfinder.com/Solar-Food-Drying.html

These homesteaders (Larissa and Bob) have been at it a long time, and the site has some other good stuff also.

I have enough materials to build a second one like that shown in the photos, but if we decide we need even more capacity, my plan would be to build the Appalachian State University design.

http://appropriatetec.appstate.edu/sites/appropriatetec.appstate.edu/files/HPImprovingSolarFoodDryers.pdf

Until we decide to ( or have to!)  really cut back on power use, we will still freeze and can plenty of food, but right now we are experimenting with dehydrating various things, with the general intent to minimize energy, maximize retained nutrition, and of course, process in ways that leaves the food with good taste and texture.

You can use either glass or plastic for the transparent trapping layer, I used double wall polycarbonate. The glass or plastic needs to be suitable for the temps, as well as possible hail.

These are the 24" square removable trays the food sets on. I used stainless steel screen, and cedar framing. The black painted aluminum absorbs heat, and reradiates it to the food, while the heated air is channeled by the corrugated metal to send the evaporating water up and away. Larissa and Bob's website goes in to more detail.

Larissa and Bob have built theirs as a permanent outdoor appliance, but I used carriage bolts and made my legs and bracing removable, for storage indoors. Right now, I'm setting at a little over 15 degrees from horizontal. If this is too steep and food slides, I will just whack the back legs and redo the braces.

I used hi temp black stove spray paint on the heat capture aluminum sheeting. We'll let this outgas for a couple days, then give it a go.

Chicken update

The chicks we started on May 1 are now over seven weeks old, and are no longer chicks at all. It had been a long time since I had tended livestock as a kid on the farm, so it's with renewed amazement that I see how quickly they grow. I partitioned off a part of our new barn for the coop, and then built this permanent run outside. We used cattle panels and chicken wire, as well as buried hardware cloth to discourage predators from digging under the fence. We will still shut them in at night in the varmint tight coop.

Next chicken project is to set up a mobile coop/roost and electronet to get them out in the rest of the pasture. I'm also building our own little abattoir, as we will do our own butchering.

This photo shows the sun shade I fashioned out of an old tarp canopy we have held on to forever, and are finally getting some use out of. I think the last time it was used was when the kids were in scouts.

Closer shot of the Black Australorps. The difference between roosters and hens is quite clear now. The other marked difference is between the Australorps and the New Hampshire Reds. While both were described as good breeds for foraging and free ranging, the Australorps are MUCH more confident and ready to explore, eat various tidbits, and just seem more alert and quick to react to their environment. On the other hand, the Reds are growing quicker.

This shot shows the hole I hacked in our new barn. I'm still working on a better latch/door mechanism.

In hopefully another month or two, we'll be sending most of the roosters to "freezer camp", and then just waiting for the hens to start laying. Since it will  be late fall by the time they should start, I will need to set up some lighting on a timer to encourage laying as the days get shorter.

learn from the cherry tree

William McDonough and Michael Braunart's book "Cradle to Cradle" is primarily about man's design methods for the artifacts we all use, but it is more deeply about our interface with the natural system we are immersed in. ( even though most of our fellow travelers visualize some sort of maginot line between us and the wider world).

 I recommend the book; it is an easy read, as it dives back and forth between big picture systems views and detailed examples to make the lesson stick. It's also the only book I own that is not made of paper, something the authors did to make a point about whole systems ( cradle to cradle) design.

As our young cherry trees bloomed this spring, it reminded me of one little "parable" from the book. The authors point out that the cherry tree, in order to survive as a species, really just needs to get one seed to to germinate and grow into a replacement that will in turn bear the next generation. But the process that has evolved ends up producing an abundance of fruit and seeds for the rest of the local ecosystem to feed on, with a net benefit for the system as a whole. The tree makes the pie bigger, instead of trying to get a bigger piece of the existing pie. ( mmm- cherry pie! can't wait) It's not really that simple, but what they are doing is trying to point out a possible alternate mindset, or design approach than what is common right now.

Is this benevolence on the  tree's part? Is this enlightened self interest? ( if trees can be enlightened) One could delve in to thermodynamics, energy flow analysis, game theory, maybe even spiritual or supernatural underpinnings of the universe, but for me, simply recognizing that this is how nature works, and has worked for millions of years means we should pay attention, and not think we as newcomers  have a better way.

Contrast the cherry tree with the industrial ag cornfield, where the monoculture field is entirely subjugated and dedicated to output for humans. We are taking all the pie, instead of trying to make the pie bigger and leaving some to share. This is only made possible, I should point out, by extreme use of nonrenewable fossil fuel inputs, which won't be available by the time the chestnut trees I'm planting now are at full height in 100 years or so.


While the book then goes on to apply the concept to designing a building, It's even more applicable to agriculture. I now try to think through what this farm should try to aim for and how we might emulate the cherry tree. Permaculture will be our overarching framework, but there are so many things to work out, so many choices, so many experiments that needs started, and the results take so long to fully be understood.

I've never taken a PDC ( permaculture design course) , and probably won't, but I find that as I walk around our land, I am constantly looking at the ground slopes, the water routes, the existing plants, the soil makeup, and try to visualize what might make things better ( value laden word there, I admit). We are after all, a keystone species, and it's time to act like it.
from a prior post:  the rogue keystone species

closing the nutrient cycle

One of, if not the greatest challenge in the post fossil fuel future will be transitioning agriculture to run with on farm natural inputs, and still get  a yield which we can live on. I need to do more study on the local geology and resultant soil makeup, especially phosphorus, as the surface geology here is very old. Regardless, trainloads of rock phosphate will not be shipped around the globe forever, so we all will need to be better at husbanding what we have here now.

This spring, we took one more step in that direction, with the introduction of livestock to our farm. We just started 30 Black Australorps and 25 New Hampshire Reds, both straight run.

Our plan is to put nearly all the cockerels in the freezer in good time, and get eggs from the hens. All the while, the chickens will be adding to the ecology here, by foraging in pasture, by eating garden vegetable processing scraps, and returning good fertilizer to the soil. Over time, we hope to do more and more to keep improving the nutrient cycle, by adding more livestock, by expanding our composting quantities, figuring out no till gardening, and doing more and more perennial food crops.

We ordered these chicks through the local feed store, but long term plans will include broody hens, selecting for breed improvement, and hatching our own chicks. Harvey Ussery deserves another shout out here, as his book is great for describing all these steps, as well as integrating chickens into an overall farm ecosystem, and will be my main reference as we proceed. Since the photo was taken, we've hung a nipple waterer, and are getting them trained to it. We have also started tossing in plants for them to peck at and get used to being part of their diet.