Jay Angler

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According to the experts in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, they're called Fairy Homes.



They seem very popular with young and old alike. Apparently, Moss is a very important component.

Pearl Sutton wrote:I have made fake raisins out of baked winter squash, that's been diced small, and soaked in lemon juice and molasses. Possibly some water if you wanted. The juices might be helped to absorb by boiling gently or microwaving them.

Winter Squash: That's another one I've never tried drying. I would look for one of the drier, sweeter squashes to try this with. Squash is hit and miss in my garden, but this would be a good use on the years when they produce well. The nice thing about dried fruit is that it easily stores well for several years in a glass jar in a cool spot.

And wrote

Like everything in permaculture, It Depends!  What part does the raisin do in the cookie that makes makes it important? Is it the sweet lump, the flavor, the texture, the idea there is something in there just for a surprise in a bite? Knowing which are the important parts you are trying to replicate might help figure out what will be an adequate replacement.

These are very good points, and I will need to ask more questions. He has expressed the opinion that he'd prefer raisins than chocolate chips, so that suggests that the chewy texture is part of the preference.

Eino Kenttä wrote:Dried mulberries! They are way tastier than raisins in my opinion. I've only eaten store-bought ones so far, since our mulberry trees will probably need a few more years at least to give enough fruit that it'd be worth drying it.

Dried Mulberries - good idea! So far all of mine have been eaten by the birds or hand-to-mouth by humans, but increasing production is in the works, so it's good to know they can be dried. I've never seen dried mulberries in the shops, but then maybe I just haven't looked hard enough!

tel jetson wrote:hoshigaki (dried astringent persimmon). can chunk them up into raisin size pieces once they’re dry.

not everybody thinks daily fruit massage is a remotely reasonable way to use one’s time, but I enjoy it. and the persimmons look nice hanging in strings during and after the process.

Having to cut them up to use, is totally an acceptable approach in my book. I find scissors work better than a knife for some dried fruits, and I do it with a video or music on, so it's not so much like a chore.

That said, alas, persimmon would be very marginal in my climate. I'm not sure anyone is growing them locally, so I would have to investigate that. Sometimes temperature is not the only factor.

Currants:
I have tried to dry currants in the past, but I don't usually get enough currants to replace what a grape vine can produce. Currants in our climate are very susceptible to some sort of bug that grows in the fruit, so we have to be careful not to plant too many. The good thing is that the seeds are very small, so removing seeds isn't needed.

Cranberry:
These need fairly special conditions to grow, and the store ones have gotten very pricy in the last few years. However, being a drier fruit to start, I expect drying them would be much quicker than grapes, and again, the small seeds don't need removing.

The commercial dried cranberries hubby bought are injected with cane sugar, but some raisins may also have either sugar injected, or are grown to maximize their sugar content.

I'm sure all you permies know that raisins are dried grapes, but do you actually  understand how much embodied energy is involved in getting grapes to dry? Even using cheater tricks, making my own is time and energy consuming. I've heard that commercially, they do some weird things to those grapes, at the very least, using chemistry to preserve them that some of us are sensitive to. (Sulfites)

However, my son adores Oatmeal Raisin cookies, so I'm looking for home-grown alternatives. It may not taste the same, but who knows, maybe it will taste better?

At the moment, I'm relying on an electric food dryer in my climate, but I've got my eyes on the Wheaton Lab's rocket assist solar dryer as I expect it would work well in my ecosystem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVwyahpzl08

I produce lots of apples, and making dried apples is old tech, but they just don't even remotely replace raisins.

This year, we had a great crop of Italian prune plums. The variety I have cut in half easily, and the seed pops out equally easily, so that is my current experiment. Yesterday I chopped a couple of cups into smaller bits so they'd be more "raisin sized", but the butter was frozen, so cookie baking was delayed...

So I'm wondering what other fruit is easy to grow, easy to prepare for drying, and would make a yummy substitute for raisins?

I am wondering how many of these strategies got overtaken by "cheap" batteries in just 5 years?

I have heard that many have and that's a shame because Permaculture is all about not putting all our eggs in one basket.

I thought Rosie Barnes from Australia did a video run down on the alternatives and why, at the moment, batteries are winning. The trouble is that batteries don't shift on the timescale of months, rather than just hours or days, and there are many places, like my Island, where we need seasonal storage to truly get off fossil fuels.



I am genuinely hoping that some of the "alternative roof-top wind" systems designed to turn city wind-tunnels into electricity, become viable, because these at least provide energy when the sun isn't shining. This can at least shorten the storage problem, even if they don't eliminate the problem.

Of course, convincing people to "just use less", has its place...

Congratulations everyone! Keep up the great contributions to permies!