Welcome to Freeze Dried Friday on SurvivalBlog! We’ve been making so many things in the Harvest Right Freeze Dryer that we want to share some of them with you. If you have something wonderful you’ve prepared in your freeze dryer that you would like to share with SurvivalBlog readers, take a photo of it and send it in along with a description. We might just feature you here!
No More Eggs!
We fired up one freeze dryer this week. Normally, I would run milk or eggs while waiting for produce to run in the machine. However, we didn’t make it to the store this week for milk and we have quite enough scrambled eggs. When you hit fifty-eight quarts of scrambled eggs, you start asking the question “Do I really need to freeze dry more?” Instead, we decided to offer our eggs for sale. It would appear that the going rate for organic brown eggs is $3/dozen. Why brown eggs are more expensive than white eggs is beyond me. Since about half of our chickens are Easter-Eggers, the customer can get a dozen straight brown or a dozen of mixed pink, blue and green (pastels). It’s a bit funny watching someone see the colored eggs for the first time. City-slickers!
I’m about done with those Easter-Eggers though. As cute as the eggs are, the hens are about as flighty as they come. But that’s a story for another time.
Tomato sauce
[1]The tomatoes are just beginning their prime harvesting season here. It’s later than normal, but the tomatoes are large, plump and abundant. Normally, we prefer to can tomatoes sauce, but both times we ran the machine this week, we were in a hurry and couldn’t see the process through from harvest to can. When the tomatoes are coming off, you can’t afford to wait a day because you just have twice as many to process the next day. Rather than set aside the days plan, we just processed them to juice, then cooked it down to a sauce (about three hours on the stove), then let it cool to room temperature.
The standard size freeze drier can process a gallon of tomato sauce in about 22 hours here. It works out anyways as Mrs Latimer says she likes to have a jar of the freeze dried sauce on hand. Sometimes when she cooks, she doesn’t want to open a full quart and with the freeze dried sauce, she just takes as much as she need and vacuum seals the rest in the jar. We also ran another batch of Chamomile flowers for tea. That makes this weeks count at 8 quarts of tomato sauce and 4 quarts of Chamomile. It’s a simple week, but the set-and-forget nature of the freeze drier made it easy.
Comments Disabled To "Freeze Dried Friday:"
#1 Comment By patientmomma On September 1, 2017 @ 1:46 pm
This week was chicken week…chicken tenders, fingers, breasts (cut thinly), shreaded, cubed, etc. I also did hot peppers and a little bit of broccoli.
The remnant of Harvey came thru my area Thursday and will be moving on north this afternoon. We had no damage to the house, out buildings or the barn, however the garden is soggy. It is a good thing we waited to plant the fall crops or the rain would have drowned them out. We have not gone down into the woods yet so there may be some damaged trees which we can use for firewood or fence posts (depends on the type of tree). Praying for those victims in TX who were flooded out.
#2 Comment By Who Knows On September 1, 2017 @ 3:06 pm
For those who haven’t tried, if you line your trays with parchment paper it makes things much easier to remove the finished product. Plus as an extra, the trays stay a whole lot cleaner. This weeks production is thin sliced peaches.
#3 Comment By Anonymous On September 1, 2017 @ 4:27 pm
Goodness…I LOVE my Easter Eggers! Out of all the many breeds we’ve had, Easter Eggers are one of our favorites. If you want flighty chickens that would be Icelandics. They may be good foragers but flighty as all heck.
#4 Comment By Hugh James Latimer On September 1, 2017 @ 5:45 pm
We used to have Buff Orpingtons that we bought locally, but had many issues with health. I think the inbreeding in this area has just reached epic proportions. We tried several different local suppliers and just couldn’t get healthy chickens. I originally got the Easter Eggers for the kids, but they turned out to be good layers so we kept them. A couple of years ago, we decided to purchase chicks from Murray McMurray and obtained Red Stars. Wow, these are layers and they are friendly too. Mrs Latimer purchased a bag of dried mealy worms for them and it’s hilarious watching them. Whenever you want them to come to you, you just shake that bag and they ALL come running with there chests puffed out and the heads held high! It takes me about 30 seconds to pen them up when I need to with those mealy worms.
On the first order, McMurray threw in an “exotic” which turned out to be a Cuckoo Maran rooster. He’s lonely because the Red Stars and Easter Eggers prefer the Red Star rooster so we ordered a couple of Cuckoo Maran hens for him this last time. They are only about 8 weeks old at this point, but I’m looking forward to the eggs. They apparently lay chocolate colored eggs.
I think there is a part of me that secretly hopes the eggs are chocolate flavored as well 🙂
#5 Comment By Rose On September 1, 2017 @ 6:20 pm
You ought to try silver laced wyandottes the next time you order. They are epic layers.
#6 Comment By oldhomesteader On September 1, 2017 @ 5:56 pm
We raise our clicks in the house in a 50gal aquarium to socialize them for the first three weeks ,a bit of a mess but well worth the extra work,even white leghorns are friendly and calm with us around
#7 Comment By C. D. On September 1, 2017 @ 8:35 pm
We have our own chickens for eggs as we aren’t as fortunate to have organic eggs for $3 a doz. Here the going rate for pastured eggs is $6 a doz. Our chickens are true free range and we give them non-gmo feed. Other prices you may be amazed by – [2]
#8 Comment By sis On September 2, 2017 @ 12:04 am
We have ordered from Murray Mcmurry for close to 20 years. They are fantastic ! They have a 24 or 48 hour refund policy. If a shipped chick doesn’t survive they will refund you the money you paid for that chick. We like their red sex link chickens. We have hatched out some of their eggs and their off spring lay lighter but still large eggs. They are a medium size chicken so don’t consume as much food. They lay well in cold weather up here in northwest montana as long as you have lights on them. We have our led lights set up on a timer for 16 hours a day as we also have layer ducks.