First thing in the morning our friends stopped by with a trailer load of pine rounds from one of the 3 trees that came down around their rental house in the last wind storm. It knocked their power out as when one of the trees came down across their power line it snapped the top of the power pole off and ripped the wires from their house. Fortunately the house is okay as are they, but that means a ton of wood that they aren't going to use. My trailer doesn't have sides and the hour drive would be a bit rough with the roads as rough as they are so they have been dropping them off on their way to Spokane.
Batch 24 had just hit the final dry Wednesday evening so I added 5 hours onto the dry time and when I got up in the morning it had about 2 1/2 hours left on the extended time. I shut it off and let it sit for a couple of hours before I got the trays all pulled out. All 5 trays were WELL dried and the sheets of pumpkin all nice and light weight.
The most ice build up I have had yet was on the inside of the machine. The ice had gotten about 2 inches thick and it meant a LOT of water was removed from the puree. By the time it was done defrosting, which took about 6 hours, I had dumped the full one gallon bucket twice and there was a cup or so more in the machine that came out. That was over 2 gallons of water removed from the 5 trays of pumpkin puree!
While the machine defrosted I packaged up the now very dry puree. It was nice as I could pile chunks into a gallon ziplock then crush it all down to an almost powder. This fit in the mylar nicely and I was able to cram the pumpkin in. The cooked happened to be a bit thicker in the tray so I was not able to fit the same as the raw so I ended up with a pint mylar of the cooked along with the 2 full quarts.
In order to fill the pint bag I had to open the bag of 50 oxygen absorbers. Since I only use a couple at a time I don't need all 50 getting exposed ti the air and going bad. I figured out the freezer pop bags we got fit the absorbers perfectly. I was able to slide bunches of 5 into the sleeve then seal it on the sealer. This works perfectly to hold them for longer term until I need them. One 5 pack got put into the mason jar as I needed one for the pint of pumpkin.
Mid day I got out and started to split the wood from the trees that I took down in the yard. I found out rather quickly that I had made the mistake of not eating anything before beginning and in short order was getting light headed as I swung the maul. After a bit of a break to get food in me and to cool off from the rush of impending blackout I got back out and continued splitting.
For a break in between splitting as well I got the fire pit emptied of ashes and a fire built to burn the scarps of what I was splitting.
I got through a little under half of the pile of logs before calling it good for the day. Inside I was doing some more organizing in the kitchen and I found an apple cake mix in a cupboard that is fairly old and figured I would make. I cut up some apples, it only called for 2 cups of chopped apples but I did 4 cups. Mixed 2 eggs, a cup of chopped walnuts, the mix, and the apples together and baked it for about 45 minutes. After the boys fully finished their dinner I made them up bowls with a piece and a scoop of ice cream. They were exclaiming constantly about how good it was and after were pining for more.
I let the freeze dryer sit empty overnight as I still need to decide on the next batch. We have a ton of veggies still that I should run from the freezer, I should cook up a chicken to run through, we have bunches of beef that I could run... Not sure yet what will be next.
Our friends are bringing by another load of wood today, I will be splitting more of my pile and stacking what I split yesterday, and I need to haul the branches the fell in the wind storm into a pile with the branches from the trees I dropped.
^Affiliate/Referral Link^
Signup With my Link and we BOTH get 25K RBN
Fleming Family Farm
FLEMING FAMILY FARM, LLC
Sustainable & Organic Methods | Heirloom Produce
All images are original works of Fleming Family Farm unless otherwise notated and credited.
If you find this post useful or entertaining, your support is greatly appreciated by upvoting, following, and sharing!
