We are currently living in our toyhauler trailer while we build our house. At 224 square feet, we had to consider very carefully every item that we chose to keep in the trailer vs those that are in storage. Alas, my dehydrators are in storage—there just wasn’t room for them in here.
But we’re in this great location that has a ton of wonderful natural medicines and teas growing all over, and I want to harvest and use them! What’s a girl to do? Build an herb drying rack!
I’d been looking up at the ceiling, trying to figure out where I could hang a bundle or two of herbs to dry. Not a perfect solution, but it would be better than nothing. I realized that the “party deck” (back ramp, with a roof and soft sides like a tent trailer) has metal doohickeys on the ceiling that are used when the sides are rolled up and secured with snap hooks. Ok, that’s a pretty sturdy location, and there’s some that are out of the way of traffic above my recliner. I started “researching” (ok, ok, it was just a Google images search) herb drying racks. Saw one that was cheesecloth stretched over an embroidery hoop, and a tiny
light bulb went off over my head. Now I had a place to hang it and a very general idea. I first thought of using some fabric as the drying surface, but all I have in my stash here is small bits intended for mending. I did have cheesecloth, though, which would allow lots of airflow! I wanted my rack to be as big as I could get in my small space, so I started pondering what I could use to make a frame.
Well, sticks, of
course! We’re clearing a number of
trees in order to build the house, so I have an abundance of sticks! I went out and cut a few to size, and found a couple more that were already pretty close. The ends were a bit splitty on those, but I’m not worried about that overmuch. I got out my trusty pocket knife and started removing the bark and twigs from my chosen sticks. That knife is
not ideal for this task, as the serrated section closest to the handle makes for some awkward leverage, but I persevered.
I then tied them into a basic rectangle, with an additional support down the center to help keep the material from sagging too terribly. Next, I lashed/sewed the cheesecloth into the frame, using, in essence, a widely-spaced buttonhole stitch. This means that the strain is distributed along the yarn, not on the very fragile cheesecloth. Finally, I used a couple of carabiners for hanging hooks and macramed hangers to attach to the frame. Voilá, hanging herb drying rack, all from things I already had on hand! That center support is not fastened to the cheesecloth in any way, so if I want to hang bundles of herbs from it, I can also do that. Today, I’ll be going out and gathering some clover (which absolutely can’t be hung in bundles and needs to be spread out on the rack) for tea and putting it to use! So pleased with this.
And I had such a good time with whittling the sticks (which I’ve never done) that I’m also going to be tackling a couple of
PEP roundwood projects!
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