Our new experiment started today. I finely sliced and diced a Mars (right) and a Red Candy Apple (left), laid the pieces on parchment on a sheetpan, and slid it into our dehydrator (the enclosed space on top of our frig and freezer.

Should this prove to be a success, we will be able to make our own onion powder and have our own dried onion flakes. It has worked for garlic, sweet corn and herbs.

Update August 10, 2010: The onions seemed to have successfully dried, although they still feel slightly sticky. Is this because they are sweet onions? They certainly taste good in casseroles. I put the remaining couple of tablespoons in a jar. Will see how they keep.

Ah, Sour cherries. Really, really love cherry pies. Which means if I want more than one or two pies a year, I need to procure and process them for the long winter. I happened to notice about two weeks ago that the wild sour cherries, which the birds were eating like mad, were almost ripe. This made me think I better call the local orchard and check as to when they might be picking. Good thing I did as they said to call back June 22, and then said tomorrow and probably tomorrow only. Wow! Early – by about two weeks. Guess what we did yesterday. : )

We picked 22 pounds in about 50 minutes. Not as plentiful as in years past, but very nice and very ripe. I had wanted 13-14 quarts. Took two bowls that were 6 and 8 quart size. We took 2 quart berry boxes to pick into so as not have an oops and spill the whole enchilada. It appeared that the bowls were not as big as they stated, since they were full at 5 and 7 quarts. We picked til the cherries were rolling off, and then filled the boxes and left. Less $33 ($1.50/pound) but with our treasure of red pie cherries.

After feeding the horses, I started processing. The most time consuming part is the pie filling, so I started (and ended – HA) with that. It also included an interval of ridding the yard of an unwelcome varmit.

The recipe I use is USDA fruit pie filling. For 7 quarts it says to use 6 quarts fruit. Well, that makes a little over five quarts. Used 7 quarts of cherries last year and got 6 quarts. I said, “Ah Ha, must mean pitted fruit and I bet I was measuring whole fruit.” This year I measured 7 quarts pitted fruit with and extra pint in just to be sure I had enough. Got almost 7 quarts, but not enought to process Number 7. Soooooo, Next Year, if I go with 8 quarts pitted (it was really close), maybe I will hit my canner load. That 7.5 pitted came from the heaping 8 quart bowl and 1/2 a quart box. So does 8.5 – 9 quarts whole = 7.5 pitted?

By the time I’m finished, take my afternoon sweat bath feeding the horses, decide all we will have for dinner is a quick salad, I’m too whooped to do the jam.

Update: We made 7 jars of jam, two fresh cherry pies, and 2 quarts frozen from the remaining 7.5 quarts. Which seems to say we picked circa 16 quarts.

As of mid-October, the dry bean harvest is complete except for cycling a few jars through the freezer in the hopes of killing off any jarred vermin. This years yield – influenced by plenty of water, but lacking a little on warmth, and then having way too much wet and humidity near drying time – gave us an adequate amount of beans (since I planted so d– many), but could have been a vastly superior yield if not for the conditions mentioned above. Bottom line, we have enough beans…

The Yield

• Kidney 13 pounds
• Brown 12 pounds
• Black 8 pounds (they suffered the most from the wet conditions
• Pinto 4 pounds(not as many planted and the deer ate them)
• Spotted 1 pound + (our seed that crossed)

Of course I did not write down (anywhere that I can locate) the total amount from last year. But looking at the Harvest photos from last year I can see that we had 8 more pounds red beans, 4 pounds more brown, 8 pounds more black, 4 pounds more pinto and four pounds more white. There seems to have been a 76 pound bean harvest in 2008. We seem to have used about 28 pounds of beans last year. This is what is left from last years bean crop:

• Kidney 4 pounds
• Brown 12 pounds
• Black 8 pounds
• Pinto 12 pounds
• Great Northern 8 pounds
• Soldier 6 pounds

We now have somewhere between 80 and 90 pounds of dry beans. Guess we need to eat more beans – less meat. Helps the planet, you know….