Wow Dorothy, y'all really processed all those chickens quickly. You're a better person than me. If I had to slaughter and process our meat, then we'd be vegetarians.

The new chicken plucker sounds nice and efficient.

The weather was perfect on Thursday and I thought about y'all and hoped you were having weather there as nice as our weather was here.

Today? The weather here is not so nice at all. Our forecast was for a high temp of 84 and here we sit right now at 95 degrees. Something's wrong with the weather models if they can't get our forecast high within 10 degrees of our actual high. Either that, or our weather is really misbehaving today.

I've been out picking tomatoes for the last few hours, and when I cool off and rehydrate inside for a few more minutes, I'll go back out and pick for a couple more hours. The harvest is starting to come in hot and heavy and tomatoes are piling up everywhere. When I make it inside to stay, I'll start dedydrating and probably will cook down a big stockpot of tomatoes into sauce or puree to either freeze or can. Maybe I'll bag up some for Tim to take to work to give to some of his coworkers tonight.

I hope the amount of rain y'all got there helped perk up the garden a little bit. I know it was not nearly enough rain to make much of a dent in your rain deficit, but any rain is better than no rain at all.

Dawn

Wow! back when I used to pluck chickens, it took us 3-4 days to do that many but there were only about 3 adults doing it all by hand I guess. I remember those chickens had the BEST flavor!!! just like the home grown vegs taste a lot better and you know exactly what they have been eating too-- a plus !

My tomatoes are loading up good now too Dawn and I have been thinking of a getting a dehydrator, is there a good kind to buy that does a better Job? There are so many out there to choose from I have been looking on Amazon at them, would like to get a dependable one.
Rita in Washita Co.

Rita, I love my Equi-flow Dehydrator and have been using it for over 30 years. If they are still available, they are certainly dependable.

Rita,

Dorothy's Equi-Flow sounds like it is wonderful and certainly well-made to have lasted for so long, but I haven't seen any for sale in years and am not sure the company is still around...unless it maybe has a different name.

My kitchen stove is a Bosch that has a convection oven. The convection oven has a Dehydrate mode that I can use to dry up to 3 large or 6 small cookie sheets of fruit or veggies at one time. I usually don't even turn it on unless I can put three full large cookie sheets in there since I don't want to use the electricity to dehydrate a partial batch. With the dehydrate mode I can choose the temperature I want within the narrow range of temperatures appropriate for food dehydration, and can put it on the timer that will turn it off at the end of a set time.

Before we bought this stove a few years ago, I had a NESCO American Harvest. In fact I had two--one I used in the 1980s and one in the 1990-2000s. The one I bought in the 1990s was larger and I bought additional trays so I could dry more at one time. It also had a fruit roll-up tray for making fruit leathers. We had a jerkey kit and made our own jerkey, usually from venison. I used it a lot back then, but not as much as I use the convection oven Dehydrate mode.

When you're drying tomatoes, the whole house smells so yummy. Anyone who drops by while tomatoes are dehydrating just cannot believe how great the house smells.

If you want to read reviews of dehydrators, go to the Harvest Forum here at Garden Web and do a search for food dehydrators. It will put up all sorts of previous threads on the various types of dehydrators people have and recommend.

If I was buying one nowadays, I'd prefer to have one with a thermostat so I could set the exact temperature I wanted. My Nesco American Harvest just had a numbered dial. It also is a good idea, when you buy one, to buy one that has the option of buying more trays. That way if you really get into dehydrating food and want to dry a lot more of it, all you have to do is buy more trays instead of buying a new, bigger dehydrator.

Dawn

Whatever you buy, make sure it has a fan. When I lived in southern Oklahoma, I could use my little cheap dehydrator that just had trays and a heating element. If you have high humidity that doesn't work well.

I have a Jenn-Air range which also has a dehydrate setting and will hold three large (commercial half-sheet) pans at once.

I have not mastered drying tomatoes like Dawn has. I will probably try it again this year and see if I can get it right.

We have a NESCO Professional model dehydrator. It has a thermostat and everything. My wife LOVES it, and she's tried a number of others.

Dorothy, congrats on the chicken processing! That sounds wonderful!

I haven't been able to do anything in the garden this week. Our well pump went out on Tuesday and it took till this evening to get it back up again. Looking forward to a SHOWER tonight!

George
Tahlequah, OK

Carol, It took me a couple of years to master dehydrating tomatoes and drying them to exactly the right stage. I just had to experiment a lot. Since I got to eat my mistakes that maybe weren't dry enough, it was a fun learning process.

George, What a week you've had. I hope you're able to get a lot done in the garden now that the well pump is working again.

Dawn

Oh Great !!! thanks for all the help, you know what my Frigidaire oven has a convection button on it. I have never used it but maybe I will experiment with it. I'll have to set my own temp on it,doesn't have a dehydrate mode, Maybe I will hunt for the book that came with it to see if it has some information in it about drying. Still will be looking at dehydrators so thanks for the info about what all you guys use.

George , why do those things (like pumps) go out when you need them most, why don't they go out when it raining? I found a Nessco Professional dehydrator on Amazon -- is this the one you use? http://www.amazon.com/Nesco-American-FD-75PRP-Professional-Dehydrator/dp/B003I4F7GC/ref=sr_1_46?ie=UTF8&qid=1338836751&sr=8-46

zzzzzzzzzzzz,

You're welcome. Normally 140 is the typical temperature for dehydrating.

I'm going to link the Dehydration section of the website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation. It is very informative and has a section on dehydrators that you might find interesting. The NCHFP is the final word on safely preserving food at home and you can rely completely on what they say.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP: How To Dry Food

zzzz, yes. That's the one.

George