Drying your food for no electricity long term storage

My farm has no electricity, restricting how I can store food. Freezing is great, if you can be sure that temperatures will not go above thawing in winter. My Russian friend fron Siberia told me that they would gateher together in autumn and make loads of pelmeni (= wontons, tortellini) and keep them outside until they were needed.

Not possible where I live.

So drying is a great alternative for keeping food in varying temperatures. I have tried drying a lot of things; some work, some do not. Mushrooms, great. Rhubarb, could never be restored in hot water. It just stayed fibery.

Tomatoes ripened at a time when our air is too humid for sun-drying. They went mouldy. Such a waste! I spent time collecting and chopping and arranging them on trays..

I would love to hear your experiences! It is a bummer to spend eons collecting, cutting and drying something and then realising it cannot be brought back to life!

I dehydrate crabapples as treats for my neighbour's horses (he works with a rescue and rehoming society). He's also a journeyman welder with access to free materials, so you can see the possibilities for handy little trades.

This batch of crabapples (about 30 litres) was over-ripe. No fancy processing -- I chopped them into thin rounds with stems and seeds intact. The horses won't care.

But I lost half my apples to our new hound as they were drying in the sun. She loves apples. And then she coughed them up on our bedroom carpet at 3 a.m. Oh well.

Oh dear. Sometimes things seem to be going so well, until....

Unlike the early pioneers, I won't starve if an experiment goes sideways. In a previous year, the squirrels started stealing them.

When Miss Hound ate all those slightly dried crab apples, I knew there would be gastric repercussions. I just wasn't sure on which end!

I've had luck in humid climates by seeking out niches that are warmer and dryer than ambient.  Inside a closed or mostly closed vehicle parked in the sun, and the attic space of a house come first to mind, I have even dried sliced tomatoes successfully thus, with or without a fan.  Another benefit of such places is they will be warm and dry even on cloudy days, and the stuff can be left there overnight, as compared to anywhere outdoors...

It's as hot and humid here as just about anywhere. Very difficult to dry anything outside during the summer. But my attic works really well. On a sunny summer day, it will be 150ºF and 20% humidity in the attic. Things dry very quickly up there.

I've done many pounds of greens in my greenhouse. Try it here in open air and all I get is a moldy mess. The juciest veggies I've done are overripe giant zucchini. Slice em thin, shake on some salt, yummy chips

If you can't do a real passive dehydrator, maybe a cool frame would work for you. I hope to experiment with juicer stuff next year. Samuel Thayer Purees fruit, spreads it on a baking sheet, and dries it. His climate is not as humid as here. He does flip the fruit once it holds together. Think fruit rollups.

Oh yeah, I forgot about the greenhouse!!  When I lived somewhere with one, that was the ticket.  Greenhouse plus fans...most things would be storage dry in one or two days.  The most challenging thing was whole blueberries, which took several days.  That greenhouse was also the place where I found that a whole goat, boned and cut up and dried, would fill only half a dozen quart jars crammed with goat jerky!

I use a hanging mesh drying basket to dry stuff outside, and let the wind do the work.
It has zippers so bugs can't get in,  and your herbs/etc don't fall out.
Similar to this here : https://www.amazon.ca/SUOMEI-Hanging-Drying-Zippers-Storage/dp/B076F84VRH?th=1&psc=1

So far I have used it to successfully dry lots of different herbs, mushrooms, and right now I'm trying small hot peppers and berries.
Also, sun is ok sometimes too (ie. 🍄 + 🌞 = Vitamin D )

I like that it is noiseless, inexpensive, is very compact to store,  and doesn't cost any electricity.

I've also used the oven, and my toaster oven, on the 'keep warm' setting to dry roots and things that have more moisture.

I have one of these at our Bulgarian place, got hubby to give it to me for my birthday present last year! It works great for herbs. They dried very fast. I haven't tried fruit or veg yet. Summers can be humid at times, but generally there's a nice afternoon breeze. This is perfect to catch heat and breeze but keep dust and bugs out. We get a lot of dust and bugs!

I haven't equipped the kitchen yet, but I know we won't be having a full-size gas or electric cooker, just not enough room as I want a woodburning stove for winter heat and cooking. I would like to get a small convection oven or a toaster oven-style air fryer with a dehydrate setting to use for drying things that take too long to air dry. Something small enough to move out to the summer kitchen (not built yet!) and keep any cooking/dehydrating heat out of the house. I do have a wonderful 9 tray Excalibur in the UK, relic of my raw vegan days. Unfortunately it's too big to move across Europe with us.

I dry apples and pears for sweet treats, the pears in particular are yummy! Like yourself Kaarina, I have trouble with humidity, and not enough sunshine, so use the bottom oven of my range cooker when I have a fire going. With the door ajar that provides a gentle heat, and I can leave them in overnight to dry nicely. Grapes do well as well. When I scrap a bunch for going mouldy in the shop I take the good ones off and dry them for raisins. I'm hoping to get a seedless grape for my new polytunnel, so that I can do this with my own grapes.

In another thread Carla gave a tip on how to make sure the food is dry enough before sealing the jar.  I will see if I can find that tip...

Once you think things are dry enough, fill the jar only about 2/3 of the way, lid it, then let it sit for several days where you can easily see it. Every day, shake the jar gently and turn it all around. You’re looking to see if anything sticks to the sides or bottom and can’t be easily dislodged, or if there’s clumps that don’t fall apart. Both of those things indicate that it’s not completely dry; take the food out and dry it longer right away. This process is called conditioning and it makes it easier to catch incompletely-dried foods before they go bad.

Caveats:
1. High-sugar foods (fruit, including tomatoes) can be a sit stickier even when completely dry. Even so, they should be relatively easy to dislodge with a shake. If you have to get your hand or a utensil in the jar to loosen them, dry more.
2. Powdered food takes a bit of additional handling. (I love doing powdered mixed green stuff to add to just about anything we eat.) For that, dry your food in reasonably-sized bits, powder them in a mortar and pestle, then lay them out on drying racks again in a warm location, such as near your wood stove. (I use parchment paper to keep the powder from falling through the holes in the racks.) Stir the powder once or twice while it’s drying. Then do the same conditioning process as above.
3. Tomato powder, being both fruit and a powder, will stick no matter how careful you are. Just dry those tomatoes until they snap or shatter when you try to break them and give them an extra-long second drying once they’re powdered. Even then, I often have to chisel the product out of the jar, but it’s so useful and space-conserving that I do it anyway!

My MIL has a dehydrator for foods, she also utilizes her wood stove and hangs things up to dry around it, as its her only heat source so its going all winter.

The best thing she dries/dehydrates is mushrooms for sure, they reconstitute so well and taste great in cooking.  There doesn't seem to be a difference between what method she uses, both come out with the same result, the hanging-up-by-the-woodstove method takes way longer of course, like a week or so.

Here's a super easy idea that basically does itself!

Get yourself a nice Jujube tree and then forget to harvest the jujubes.  the jujubes will naturally dry out.  and once they're completely dried you can store them for up to a year!!  this is amazing!  no other fruit i know of can dehydrate itself in this fashion - and it's 0 labor.  you just pick them off the floor or from the tree when their dried out or pick them first then let them dry themselves.  the taste might seem a little foreign at first.  but they're quite delicious once you get used to it.

You can do this at scale too.  Get like 10 or 20 or more lbs, if you have a bunch of these trees and you'll always have fruit over winter.

Pascal, the jujubes sound excellent! I'd love to hear more about your experience growing them, but this should probably be a separate thread as Kaarina, the original poster in this thread, is in a climate zone that I doubt would support jujubes. I started a new thread and would love for you to reply there: https://permies.com/t/267083/tech/Growing-tips-jujubes