I still think 20 lbs of apples is an absurd amount of work to equate to 1 lb of herbs, but I did it. It hadn't been attempted in 7 pages of
bb submissions, and I wanted to try something new. I've dried mint before. I could collect and prepare 1 lb of mint in under an hour. 20 lbs of apples... took me 2 days.
I collected 50 lbs from what I think was once an orchard? It's public
land now, a popular
deer hunting location due to the many overgrown
apple trees. I think I walked about 3 miles total? Carried the apples from a half mile in, 3 times. The largest bag had 20 lbs of apples, so I washed, cored, and arranged them in our old (at least 20 years, longer than I can remember) electric dehydrator. About 2-3 lbs would go in at a time, at least until they started to shrink, and then I squeezed them together and added more. I put them into a glass jar we use with this machine (the "sacred jerky jar!") and then a much less sacred leftover tub, and then the rest went into a bowl for immediate snacking. They're good! I would make more, except my hands are a little cut up right now and my quail are getting sick of
apple cores, so maybe later. Or I might use them for something else, baking?