We Can't Get No Dehydration...

One of the best forms of food preservation has remained elusive to us for the past week. Just as we were preparing to introduce an exciting and new form of food-drying, our tried and true method bit the dust. These would be the solar food dryer and the electric one, respectively.

Our electric dryer, which can be identified only by its manufacturer, "B & J Industries", and vague "Model # 7010", remains somewhat of an enigma to me. What has more miscellaneous information about everything than the internet? And yet the only two leads I could find on this dryer are an ad in a 1980 issue of Backpacker Magazine and a thread on an online forum called "Rapture Ready" in which the writer talks about hers suddenly ceasing to work. That's just what happened to ours, and in the absence of any information on the omnipotent and omniscient internet I was forced to take matters into my own hands.At this point I'd like to harp on the benefits of a well-rounded childhood. Last week our intern Tracy said her son asked "how does Dan know how to do so much stuff?" (keep in mind, this is through the eyes of a 5-year old). My answer: I took lots of stuff apart when I was a child. My family can attest to this. Apparently it is only much later that one learns how to put stuff back together again.
But back to the point. I'm not very electrically savvy, but I could figure the dehydrator out after taking the back off. It runs more or less in series from the power supply through motor, heating element, thermostat, and thermal cutoff, which is the safety fuse in case the whole thing overheats. Bypassing the thermal cutoff (which breaks at 98° C) I found the whole thing worked. To make a long story short, I found 98° C thermal cutoffs online and got one for a little under a dollar. Which is really a ripoff, because if I ordered 1,000 of them they would only cost 34 cents each...
I haven't installed it yet, because I have been too busy dancing with excitement around our new solar food dehydrator! For my birthday I received a book, The Solar Food Dryer, which discusses the concept of using solar energy and contains recipes for dehydrating. Which I skipped right over to get to the plans it gives for building your own "high-performance, low-cost solar food dryer". It took me much longer than it had to to build, because I'm not great at assembling all the materials before beginning. As far as I can tell at this point, it is certainly capable of high performance and was relatively low-cost, depending on what one has lying around.
For materials the plywood, pine and redwood were free, and the big pane of glass was donated from friends' renovation project. (I actually got two of those panes, so I am building one for us down here and one for the folks up at Ecology Action). For the first unit I also scrounged much of the hardware (or fabricated it) from found items. For the second I am using "nice" things that I bought. It is sort of hard to nail down a final cost for the hardware (screws, handles, hinges, screen kits, thermometer, misc. other) because I wasn't keeping great track, but my estimate is about $75 per unit. Maybe less.
Those with more discerning tastes for the final look might spend more, and those who have a keener eye for scrounging parts would spend much less. Probably the only somewhat mandatory costs are the thermometer (~$7), screen kits (~$30), weatherstrip ($5), and the high-temperature stove paint (~$12). The gathered ingredients look something like this.
I put it all together, and ended up with a very nice, very effective piece of equipment. How effective? I was hoping to get it finished when we would have full summer sun to use it, but only just got it all finished this past week. We put it out Wednesday afternoon when the temperature was about 70° F and the interior temperature hit around 140° F. One afternoon wasn't enough to finish the large screen of apples, so we put it out again Thursday morning and they were dry before noon, again hitting about 135° F on a day with a few drifting clouds. So with mid-October sun angle and cool temperatures it still did the trick wonderfully. I'm sold. Well, I was sold before, but now I would recommend it to others.What we have now is a contraption that, with no further cost, will dry two 42" x 30" screens at a time full of yummy fruits and veggies whenever the sun is out. Yay!

Let's go to the County Fair!

This year we were hoping to attend the Mendocino County Fair and Apple Show and the California Wool and Fiber Festival, three big events bundled together. It is a great time because, besides the usual rides and fried foods, it has lots of free samples of apples, wonderful art and craft displays, tons of cute animals, a whole building of fiber stuff, and best of all, the Sheepdog Trials. If you want an impression of how cool these dogs are, check out this youtube video of the 2008 Champion at the Mendocino County Fair. Picture 1,500 or so people behind the camera hanging on every motion of the dog. Previously that has been the highlight for us.

So what would have ordinarily been a fun time turned in to much more this year, as one of the Willits Spinning Guild members was organizing the Fiber Festival part. She came to the August meeting and announced that she wanted it to be a good show, so everyone should submit at least something for judging. It was a reach for me, but I decided to submit four samples of yarn I am spinning for Margo to crochet into an afghan. Just to fill the ranks out, you know.
We went to pick up the booklet that tells you guidelines, divisions, categories, and classes, and it was thick. Margo couldn't resist looking through it, and as she did she got ideas, marking pages that she thought were fun possibilities. She became more and more ambitious, and in the end decided to submit two pies, a plate of cookies, and solar-canned peaches and pears.
In this way we brought extra excitement about the fair. Sunday held the Sheepdog Trials and the spinning contest, so that was our day. We got there in time to see the last two dogs, then wandered straight over to the fiber building to greet friends and check out my submissions. I ended up with a first, second, and third place ribbon among four samples, which felt great. There were some fantastic projects in the mix, all woven, knitted, crocheted, tatted, felted, etc. We got to see our friends Steven and Tamara, who go about in fashionable buckskins and are the most hardcore primitive-skills people we know. At their booth they had home-made examples of everything from arrowheads to nets, plus some further down the alphabet. They have a company called Paleotechnics through which they sell some kits, have a number of books, and do an incredible amount of education.
Then came the spinning contest. I spun in it, and Margo helped the judges get everything organized and processed. As you see in the photos, there are a few styles of spinning represented: drop-spindle (my choice), Navajo spindle, and spinning wheel. The contest has three parts. The first is the warm-up spin. In this one they give you some fiber and a blindfold. The pictures tell the rest. These ladies are using the Navajo spindle and, as they have probably been spinning twice as long as I have been alive, are not much hindered by the blindfold. I was another matter...The second part involved spinning for quality. This was broken down into many classes, dividing by age, experience, and method. I am experienced enough to not be a beginner, but not so much that I can compete in quality with the average "experienced" spinner. The only other experienced drop-spindlist had 20 or 30 years' practice on me. But we had fun. And I got to show off my andean-plying skills. For a great description of the technique check out this blog post by an intrepid spinner. I've created my own way to avoid the necessity on my drop spindle, but the contest involved extenuating circumstances. And, as I said, I got to show off.
The third part was as hopeless as the second in terms of winning, but was a real hoot to try. It was the speed contest, and was only divided into beginner and experienced, all else considered equal. There is no match for a spinning wheel in all-out speed. There was a great clacking and clattering, and I was reminded why I prefer simplicity to mechanization. If anything had gone wrong with one of those wheels it wouldn't have been pretty. The one next to me sounded ready to throw a rod. So no prizes for Dan there. Below, Margo helps to make sense out of a tangle of niddy-noddys.After winding our way through buildings and displays, sheep, hogs, cows, bunnies and fowl we finally made it to the Arts and Crafts building to see what kind of success Margo had found in the canning and baked goods. They were spread all over the place, whether to make better decoration or because of some strange sort of logic, we weren't sure, but it took a while to find all her submissions. First we stumbled across the Shoofly pie, which had a second-place ribbon on it. It's always nice to see that someone else thinks your family recipe is [almost] as tasty as you do. Wandering, we found the solar-oven-canned peaches and pears, which won first and second places in their classes. After more searching we found the mint-chocolate-chip cookies in a glass case, with a second place ribbon on them. Great victory for the Royer-Miller kitchen!
It took us a long while to find the final submission, her "All- Pumpkin Pie", but when we did we were quite pleasantly surprised. It won first place in the Pumpkin Pie class and Best of Division for pies and pastries! A little blue ribbon and a big purple one. How about that?
The downside of submitting baked stuff to this fair is that they do the judging the Wednesday before the fair opens. Then it sits there all Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday before you can pick it up. At the least it means stale cookies. At the worst, in the case of moist stuff (like pumpkin pie), it means a healthy layer of mold. Nothing says "Yum!" like a big purple ribbon on a moldy pie. Below is the pre-penicillin version.So if you want the secret to amazing cookies and pies, you know who to ask. And remember: if it molds, it is natural.
Out of nine submissions, then, eight won awards. What's more, the cash involved paid for the submission fee and gas to the fair! But not the garlic fries and the funnel cake...

First Frost!

No soft about it: the weather has shifted, and last night it went right down to 28° F. That means the end of our beautiful solanaceae element. Peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, they all have a sad look about them. And any amaranth still in the beds took a very ugly turn when they thawed out. Similarly the buckwheat.
Luckily we saw it coming, and got the sorghum out last week. Our favorite variety is Dale, which produces both seed and syrup. The seed can go through any freeze, but the sap goes through a chemical shift after frosts and becomes much less palatable. So we always want to make sure we harvest the sorghum and run it through the press with time to spare.
The millet seems to have passed through alright this once, and the corn is as happy and dying as ever it is this time of year. Our little baby rye and wheat plants love this kind of thing, so if they make it past the birds and rodents they will get big and strong despite the winter.
And the heater turned on in the house last night... Looks like Fall!