We've been getting a lot of tomatoes in the last couple of weeks, but the real explosion has been in the cherry varieties - a couple dozen plants have offered up maybe 30-40 pounds of tomatoes so far.


It takes several pints of cherry tomatoes to make a quart of dried ones, but they taste delicious.


We use a Nesco Gardenmaster food dehydrator, currently on sale for almost 30% off (about $100 instead of $150) on Amazon. We've used it on and off for years and haven't had any trouble with it. The dehydrator features rigid tray sections topped with flexible polypropylene discs (mesh or solid, depending on what you're drying) that are easy to wash and BPA-free.


The drying process took around 24 hours at 135 degrees, but that was only background noise and occasional tasty checks of the tomatoes' progress. The real time-consuming tasks were washing and splitting the tomatoes and flipping them all on their trays halfway through; despite several clever ideas, there proved to be no quicker way to do this than to gently pick them up one by one and flip them over.

The dried tomatoes are not perfectly "preserved" in that they keep best and longest in the freezer, not on the pantry shelf. You can also preserve these dried tomatoes in olive oil, although it's recommended that you eat any stored that way within a few weeks, sort of a tomato equivalent to refrigerator pickles. I plan to do this with a small subset of these dried cherry tomatoes because I'm sure they will be delicious tossed in a pasta salad or topping a garden salad with spinach and goat cheese.

Last night we processed about 10 pounds of gorgeous whole, "full-sized" tomatoes - deep yellow ones (I'm blanking on the variety name) and lots and lots of Romas. Getting the skins off was easier than I anticipated; a pot of boiling water, a couple-minute dunk, and then dropping them in an ice-water bath to cool, and my four-year-old daughter Z and I peeled the skins off easily. I chopped off the stem end and in some cases pulled out a tougher central pillar while we both peeled them; then all it took for the sauce was simmering and seasoning. It wasn't enough to can, and we're a little wary of our skills at canning low-acid foods anyway. And of course there's the whole BPA thing. We'll freeze the gallon or so of tomato sauce to save it until winter.

Are you harvesting a bumper crop of anything, or planning on one? If so, what are you doing with it? We'll share a few other ways we're making use of our tomatoes in upcoming posts!

Sky Full of Bacon's all-vegetarian forage-fest. Inspiring!



[Via]

If you're like me, you think of yourself as just a little more self-sufficient than most people. My friends oohed and aahed, for instance, after finding out that I make my own butter from raw cream I buy from an Amish farmer. I shrugged it off; I pick up the food from a drop point about 10 minutes from my house, I told them, and "churning" butter is as easy as shaking a sealed jar for 20 minutes or so while checking my e-mail with the other hand.

But secretly, I enjoyed that praise. I enjoyed thinking of myself as the kind of person who doesn't use paper towels or own a television. I flattered myself that I could "rough it" as well as my great-grandmother, Amish herself. Then my brother dealt me a cruel hand: he embarked on a solo road trip from Baltimore to Montana, where he spent the summer wrangling horses in the wilderness, camping outside and growing his hair into one giant dreadlock. And before he left, he gave me this book.

Don't get me wrong - Country Wisdom & Know-How is about as good a manual for living as you'll find anywhere. It's exhaustive and exhausting all at once. There is almost no domestic or agricultural task that is not represented here; the printing is tiny and the pages are large, no-nonsense newsprint with hundreds of carefully labeled line drawings. But if you thought you were pretty countercultural, it will school you within an inch of your life.

The book is a compilation of information from Storey Publishing's Country Wisdom Bulletins, small booklets which were published in the 1970's during the "back to the land era." They were simply and directly written, with easy-to-follow diagrams, and millions of copies were sold to eager do-it-yourselfers. The Bulletins have been divided into six basic categories, all of which are tied in some way to agriculture and gardening, in keeping with the belief that natural is better.

Animals: Here is where you can easily get lost for hours learning how to identify, attract, feed, bathe, house and care for all kinds of wild birds (including a formula to be fed to abandoned babies, every fifteen minutes for twelve hours a day, until you can get more professional help: dog food, egg yolk and baby cereal!) Or you could learn what to look for in buying a horse, how to build a beehive, or the ten most useful herbs to improve feline health. And if you ever need to butcher anything, you can consult the diagrams here to ensure you do it correctly.

Cooking: This is far from an exhaustive primer, but there are very detailed sections on a dozen different ingredients, from winter squash to green tomatoes and basic breadmaking. The dairy section is especially useful; people used to know how to make clabbered cream cheese and use a spoonful of yogurt to start another batch, and once you've done either, you'll be hard-pressed to continue buying an inferior product at an inflated price. The section on preserving food is also a great place to start, if you've never done canning or pickling before; there are lots of recipes for simple jams and relishes, vinegars, and (woo-hoo!) a whole section devoted to homebrewing, from hard cider to beer and wine.

Crafts: Try to imagine the exact opposite of the plaques with misspelled, pithy sayings you've seen at craft fairs! All of these goods are useful as well as beautiful, from candlemaking to quilting and basketweaving. In every case, the instructions are comprehensive and clear, and the projects simple enough for a complete novice to attempt. The best section, "Gifts from Nature," features ideas like wreaths, soap and gingerbread houses (think elevations and fretwork details, not graham crackers and Tootsie Rolls). Having long believed that the best gifts are the ones made by hand with love, I couldn't wait to try some of these.

Gardening: In this section you'll learn to grow the plants you'll use for projects all over the book. It begins with a thorough tutorial on types of soil and seed, garden planning and layout and prevention of weeds and pests. Then there are over a hundred pages (roughly a fifth of the book) devoted to individual types and categories of plants, from flowers to herbs, vegetables, roots and fruits. You can find out how to grow the grapes you'll later make into wine; propagate lavender for use in medicinal salves; or transform an existing field into a meadow of wildflowers. Each section contains detailed information about growing conditions, transplanting, maintenance and harvesting.

Health and Well-being: Not to worry, there is no "miracle cure" being promoted here - just the sensible advice of generations who have relied on plants to keep their bodies in balance. There are recipes for bath salts and aromatherapy oils, primers on the care and use of healing herbs like echinacea and goldenseal, and ideas for herbal teas, soups and medicines thought to be beneficial for a variety of ills.

Home: More proof that this book will appeal to both genders! This section runs the gamut from fairly quick (repairs to leaky faucets or broken windows) to very involved (construction of sheds, fences and root cellars.) But both are treated with equal efficiency, and as always, quality and beauty remain important. Ever wanted to learn how to cane a chair, braid a rug or sew a curtain? All are detailed here.

Overall, the best feature of this book is its unpretentious and direct language. No stone is left unturned, no aspect of a project ignored, but the editors have taken care to retain the down-to-earth quality you'd expect from a book based on passed-down knowledge from largely agrarian societies. If you fancy yourself a lover of nature, you will find this book a joy to read for all the years it will take you to do so!