The final question involves dehydrating versus freeze drying. If you like the texture of dehydrated apples, peaches and apricots (or mangoes and persimmon and bananas depending on your climate) then its an easy way to preserve large amounts of food at once. You could set up a solar dehydrator that can hold MASSIVE amounts of food, like you might get when you spend an afternoon picking your neighbor's tree. I have the big Excalibur, which has 9 square sheets. And I still often get out old windows screens when I'm doing large batches of herbs or something. They wait their turn for the dehydrator.
My kids enjoy fruit leather, which requires the extra silicone sheets. They don't really like sliced dehydrated sliced apples. They DO like dehydrated sliced pears! A spiralizer hand crank makes that process a joy (as opposed to hand-slicing.)
I freeze dry an abundance of fruits each year. I love the crispy apricots, for example. Sliced apples and pears are AMAZINGLY crisp. Freeze dried corn, eggs, even yogurt are also nice. But, by far, the reason I love my freeze dryer the most is for the tomatoes. When processing tomatoes sauce, marinara, salsa, and especially paste, usually there's a lot of simmering involved. I have used my crock pot for that, too. But I almost ALWAYS burn it. 30+ hours of a low-boil and... watching a pot is not my strong suit.
Instead, I dice and freeze dry ALL my tomatoes. I then reconstitute with as much water as needed for paste, sauce, or just throw them in soups/chilli. No blanching, no saucing, no burning, no canning.
The downside for a freeze dryer is the energy and motor oil required for each small batch. Two days of drying for very wet foods. If lowering your carbon footprint is a goal of yours, a freeze dryer doesnt help with that. At least it can be done completely without plastic. A vacuum sealer, on the other hand, uses exclusively plastic. So you'd have to decide if that bothers you.
