It's that time a year: harvest and preserve the bounty

About this time each year my days are filled with harvest, clean, chop, and preserve the garden bounty. I make pickles, sauces, freeze some of the stuff, and dry some.

My dehydrator right now is electric, and I am really considering having my husband build one of these, now that Paul, Mud and the bunch have done all the experiments, and created the best version of a solar food dehydrator!

Sadly, I am on the preservation sidelines this year for the first time in probably 25 years. As we're building our house, all my preservation tools are in storage and there's just no place at all to put any preserved food, so I'm living vicariously through you all. Tell me about all the things you're preserving and post lots of pictures!

Hi, Shawn

With all your preservation tools in storage, dehydration sounds like a good idea, especially when folks don't need a lot of space for dehydrated foods.

Dehydrating foods can be as easy as putting some trays on the dash of a vehicle.

Here is a thread to help folks get started:

https://permies.com/t/169685/Dehydrating-Beginners-Advise

Hi Liv.  After spending some time at Wheaton Labs in late September, I was intrigued by the solar dehydrators and really enjoyed being able to see two side by side to be able to compare and contrast.  We did use the rocket assist one for rhubarb candy, sunchokes, pumpkin, and some apples.  As I understand it, one key strength for the rocket assist unit is particularly in cooler weather - when we were there, the nights were definitely getting cooler, so it made sense to use the sun during the day and the rocket overnight.

That said, in the sunny weather we had (for most of the week), in the afternoon I was gathering trays (the empty ones were all in the straight solar unit) and the tray area was noticeably warmer than that in the rocket unit.

So, if you need portability, or do tend to dehydrate earlier in the season while the sun is stronger and weather warmer, I think the simpler build of the standalone unit may be a good fit.  I've recently purchased the plans and think that is the route we will go.  That said, to use that unit, you'll want to load up your dehydrating trays earlier in the day so that the drying gets started and well underway before you get to overnight lower temperatures.

Of course, there is a cool factor of the RMH assisted unit.  We may go that route (or make a second unit in time), but we could usually get a lot of our drying started early enough in the season to be able to go without.  

A bit of a dream of mine since our SEPP time at Wheaton Labs would be to build a (skiddable) structure that has something like a laundry tub, water storage, a prep table and solar dehydrator.  Imagine being able to harvest, then prep, and get food into the dehydrator in minutes...our current system doesn't work anything like that (especially since we grow primarily at our acreage and live primarily at our city home).