’09 Season’s Homestead Project: Solar Dryer

Post 1 of an Upcoming Series

Acknowledging that we homesteaders have been ahead of the curve for quite awhile on how to become ever more self-sufficient, the current worldwide economic crisis – which threatens to last for years – no doubt has us expanding our means of producing and preserving food crops this year. On my homestead a good deal of work is going into expanding the amount of acreage we’ve planted in truck crops, begun experimenting with staples like hard red winter wheat and grain amaranth, and doubling the actual plantings of favorites like potatoes and corn that have traditionally been so cheap to buy that we didn’t depend upon our own.

On the preservation front, I’ve embraced a project for this season that should pay for itself many times over during the years it will be in use. It’s a solar food dryer, with which I’m hoping to cut seriously into the energy usage (and expense) of regular canning and freezing as the crops come in. This will not only help keep our not air conditioned cabin cooler during the hot August tomato harvest/canning frenzy, it should also cut way down on waste of perfectly good food from the land that comes in piecemeal, is less-than-perfect, and cannot be immediately consumed. This means I can preserve much more of the apple and pear crops, can preserve the persimmon crop that just started producing last fall, can dry sweet corn, squash and even dark green leafies for long-term storage while preserving much more of their nutritional goodness as well as flavor.

We’re still collecting the materials for this project, and I’ll be taking pictures of every step of building and operation for updates through the season. The basic design of the dryer can be found at GeoPathfinder. Though I’ll be using polypropylene screen instead of stainless steel, which is very expensive and difficult to find in small lots. I also like the idea of making several box-screens that can be loaded in stages, because then I can build a rack above the wood stove to continue drying activities into late September and October with fruit leathers from the apples, pears and grapes. Or in the early spring to dry cherries, which always ripen weeks before we’re done heating the cabin.

Another design issue for this NC mountain climate will have to be an even lifting of the glass and shield assembly, as opposed to simply hinging it and propping it open. That’s going to cause seriously uneven heating in our strong summer sun, which is too strong to keep from baking the food with the top closed. That also means I’ll need another screen to go over the food trays to keep insects off. I figure a scissor-riser type device at all four corners to lift the glass/shield assembly straight up. For the extra bug screen I’m figuring a standard retracting window shade device that I can pull across and secure.

I’ve also ordered Mary Bell’s book Food Drying with an Attitude, which should be here before the end of the week. We don’t do jerky (vegetarians), but I’m quite curious about drying dark green leafies which usually end up in the compost pile because we can’t eat them fast enough and I hate canned greens. I figure if they crumble badly I can save the powder to add to soups and stews all winter, maybe mix with other broken/crumbled dried produce to make a jar of veggie bullion. Am growing sweet yellow, storage white and big red onions this season, hope they do better than usual. Celeriac is also something I want to grow a lot of, and now I’ll be able to dry the stalks and leaves to add to the bullion jar. The roots don’t need preserving, they’ll keep just fine in the root cellar all winter.

Stay tuned for construction updates and the results of my experiments in food drying! More to come soon…

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