Drying Foods

Growing excess of what you need? Store the rest.

When we get to the point when no one else will take another zucchini - the only thing left is to store it. As for storing dairy - make cheese!

In a typical summer, the produce begins in June with early vegetables and fruit (strawberries). This begins a feast of harvest. By mid-August the variety of food abundance becomes so over whelming that unless it is properly stored - so much of it will go to waste.

I found food dryers to be expensive to buy and then operate. The propane heated food dryers might do the job quicker and provide an even temperature for drying food to perfect preservation, but there again, the process depends on an outside source of energy to buy and we want to do things on the cheap and easy.

So, we took an old refrigerator and a freezer and convert them to both solar and wood heated food dryers. The older units are all metal interiors. Old glass was used to make the solar collector and the front door of the refrigerator is painted black to absorb as much heat as possible. Smaller screened holes on the bottom of the solar collection unit let fresh air in and keep bugs out. The whole solar collection system is intergraded into the door and though a little awkward, collects heat on sunny August days - up to 120 degrees F. On the top of the door, solar fans move the warm dry heat into the main compartment and solar powered fans draw the heated air down through the racked food and out the sides. The larger the solar collection - the more free heat the unit has for drying food.

Since we didn't want a refrigerator looking thing sitting in the yard all summer - we painted it black and it seems less noticeable. . . but still sits in plain sight. Well, we happened to have an old freezer that wasn't doing the best job so we cannibalized that too. But since we already had a solar food dryer - the next thing to try was a wood fired dryer.

We happened to have an old charcoal grill that found new life as the wood box. The chimney runs through the back of the old freezer where it heats the box. I had originally thought to just vent the smoke through the space between the inside metal and outside metal of the freezer but that would have meant dismantling the whole unit to remove insulating materials.

Making the food racks was harder for this dryer than the solar dryer since they had to be both food safe and made out of metal since this gets hotter faster than the solar powered box. The shape is also unique to each set up since it needs to clear the inside chimney.

Vents were added to keep the dry air coming in and moist air out and we still have work to do to tweek the unit into perfect operation since the temps inside this unit can reach 450 degrees F rather quickly. For more control of the temperature we need to make the in-take and exit air holes adjustable (maybe add a sliding air in and out).

We found this unit double duties as a great smoker when the inside chimney is removed.

Here's a link to our favorite Food Drying Info: