7:25 p.m. and I haven't taken one stitch yet. Where has this day gone? First, we went to Chetopa, Kansas to the orchard and got more apples and pears.
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There's about 10 pounds per bag so that's about 60 pounds. I'm not even sure how many pears and how many apples. I think it's actually mostly apples. Vince loves the Sunflower variety of apple. They only had 15 pounds. He had wanted 40 pounds so he got the 15 pounds and then he got 20 pounds of seconds, which about 99% of them looked perfect. A few had a spot or two that I had to cut around. Then the bag of red apples in the front is a variety from New Zealand (I think she said it's Queena or something like that). That is not one from their breeding program but the Sunflower apple is one of theirs. You can read a bit about their apples and pears on their website. It's interesting. They have probably a dozen different apples and maybe half a dozen different pears, as well as berries, pecans and peaches when in season. We processed one bag of the Sunflower 2nds and got them in the freeze dryer.
Vince did help and we got one bag cleaned and sliced and into the freeze dryer. And, yes, those trays are a little over stacked! I'm guessing there are at least 7 bags of pears and apples left in the fridge from the last trip there. I canned 30 pints of pears already. The freeze dryer has not sat idle in months. It's getting up there in years and I have no idea how long they last. I'm not sure what I would do if it went out, especially during this busy season. I usually let it defrost manually and up until this year, probably had not run the auto defrost cycle more than 4 or 5 times but the last 15 or so runs, I've used the auto defrost cycle just to rush it a long.
Within the last 10 - 14 days, here's some of what I've freeze dried. All of this was lined up on the floor of the room where the freeze drying room is kept so I took the photos and got it all put away.
Above is five 1-1/2 pint jars of chopped bell peppers along with one 1-1/2 pint jar and a quart jar of jalapeno halves. All that from the garden. This was all one run in the freeze dryer.
The okra shown above was three runs in the freeze dryer. I get about three half gallon jars from each run. Every three days we get enough okra to fill the four trays of the freeze dryer. We actually cut it every day and keep it in the fridge til there's enough. That's nine half gallon jars and one pint jar. My goal for each year is 15 half gallons. So far this year, we have 21 half gallons. That will be enough to make it through the year if we're fairly conservative with it. There's 8 cups in each half gallon jar. When I cook okra, I like to cook 3 cups at a time but with these jars, I'll use a bit less than three cups so we can get three meals per jar. Our average first frost is the 2nd or 3rd week in October but it looks like it may not happen until the first week of October so that means a bit of extra time to harvest okra. I always take a Dutch oven about half full of sliced okra, stew it down, cook it with onions and peppers, then drop it by one cup portions onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet, freeze it, then put those "clumps" into zipper bags and use those for gumbo or soup. While the freeze dryer is busy, I may go ahead and get that done while the freeze dryer is so backed up with other things.
This is five half gallons and one quart of basil. That's two runs in the freeze dryer. I can pack the basil in pretty tightly in the freeze dryer and then mash it down in the jars so there's a lot of basil in there but if I were to run it through the blender, it would probably be half a cup. I should probably do that . . would taste the same and take up a lot less room. Maybe once everything is done and I have some extra time, I'll get all the basil out and do that.
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