permaculture

[kevin akiva <kevinakiva@yahoo.com>]

> Subject: Food Dryer
 > Please help me save some research.  I'll have a lot
> of Tomatoes coming on in the next week or two, and
> my wife just agreed to try to dry them.  I'd rather
> not have a 1,000W electric dryer, but if I want a
> solar dryer, apparently I have to build it, and I
> don't have much time to find the right design and
> execute.  Where do I go for a proven solar food
> dryer?
---------------------


i've gone through the same search process before,
specifically to dry tomatos. like everything, details
such as scale (ie, how many tomatos you have to dry),
local weather conditions, your time available to
handle the processing, cost and what materials you
want to use, and how long you want the drying unit to
last all come into play. additionally, you may find
that different ways to preserve tomatos may also be
used or even preferable than drying.

there's PLENTY of info available through a simple web
search (possibly THE "killer ap" of the internet),
especially through such groups as attra, echo, ag
extentions and colleges such as purdue...

i wound up needing to dry about 300-600 lbs fresh
tomatos/year and decided on this relatively quick and
easy method, primarily due to materials on hand and
the arid summer weather i had:

first, i was processing heirloom tomatos and also
saving a lot of seed. so i processed my tomatos by
removing the gloopy wet innards of the tomatos for
seed saving, and primarily dried only the meaty flesh
and skin. this probably reduced needed drying time and
energy by at least half. if you're not interested in
saving seeds, you can use the gloopy part for other
purposes such as fresh use (makes excellent bloody
mary base.)

i sliced tomato flesh into about 1/4 inch slices and
placed on window screens up to 12 square feet in size,
leaving them outside in dry/well-ventilated areas of
my patio. one option was to place the racks just a few
inches above the stone patio to benefit from the
radiant heat/drying characteristic of the stone
itself. 

TIP: if you sprinkle the wet slices with powdered dry
herbs like rosemary, oregeno, basil, and/or salt, the
taste sensation upon drying is extra-satisfying.

to make a long description shorter, i also placed a
standard oscillating electric fan in front of the
screens which decreased drying time and effectively
kept insects off the operation. it isn't necessary to
do this, but if you don't you'd probably want to do
something else to protect from bugs, such as using an
enclosed/sceened box design. drying for me usually
finished in one full day or so.

the screens were easy to use and i didn't need to
clean them for most if not the whole season. when i
did, high-pressure hosing did the trick (moisten, wait
until the dried on stuff thoroughly softened, then
spray off.)

after tomatos dry to the appropiate level, i
immediately put them into containers and preferred
keeping them in the freezer for optimal taste and
crispiness. additionally, if there is any
inappropriate residual moisture levels, it didn't
matter when kept in the freezer, but could easily
cause a whole jar in the cupbord to quickly go bad.

btw, i also made a lot of sauce and paste in my solar
oven, often finishing the process on the stovetop.

finally, i ultimately came around to a
quasi-macrobiotic perspective that solanacea such as
tomatos, eggplant, etc were not that great for my
health. i simply feel better if i'm not eating them,
and i don't seem to crave them when i don't. so i
don't grow many anymore or have to deal with dying
them at all. Ha!

design to recline-
akiva





      
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