The Solar Dehydrator!

I made a solar food dehydrator so I could dry the extra food I grow. This way I will have some home grown food during the heat of summer when the heat is too overwhelming to grow much in Phoenix. The best part is that not only is it free to operate, it was nearly free to build! I based it off a plan in The Solar Food Dryer by Eben Fodor which I borrowed from the library. The materials were nearly all things I already had -- hardware, casters, glass, metal and wood. All of the wood was scrap that I had laying around the studio, the main box part is made from birch that I normally would use for paintings, but these pieces had various flaws that made them not appropriate for art.
I wanted to keep the Rachel-Dehyrator9000 plastic-free so I decided that stainless steel would be the best material for the food screens... I couldn't figure out why the book would suggest using plastic screening. After a lot of searching I finally found a warehouse that carried stainless mesh so I went down there and was escorted (after putting on a hard hat and glasses) to pick out my mesh. I found it exactly what I was looking for and then learned it would be $55 for 8 square feet! Now I know why people are choosing plastic. Lucky for me, they were kind enough to get some perforated stainless out of their scrap bins, cut it down and give it to me for free. :)

So here are my total costs to build the dehydrator:
2 hinges- $2.39
Friction hinge- $2.79
Thermometer- $4.79
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Total Cost: $9.97 plus tax.

My first use on an 80 degree day, the internal air temperature got to 160 degrees with the vent door partially opened. I've been leaving the food out from 10am until about 4pm but I think it is ready to come in after about 4 hours. I expect to be able to run 2 batches a day during the summer. Which I think may even be faster than an electric dehydrator. Hooray for self sufficiency and sticking it to The Man!

Banana chips:
4 organic bananas: $1.16

One of the trays loaded up (2 bananas worth)

In the dehydrator

Banana chips! (after I ate a bunch) :)

Roxy the friendliest chicken

Here I am posing with my Rhode Island Red when all of a sudden Roxy decides that she wants to be in the pictures too and flies up onto my arm.

New garden additions...

In addition to the 6 trees I planted last week (and the radishes, greens, strawberries, onions, tomatoes, squash and cucumbers), I've added a couple more plants. I'm suffering from a bit of a nursery addiction. A week or two ago (right after I bought the 6 trees) I wanted to get some more strawberry plants, I thought if I rode my bike, then I would only buy what would fit in the baskets. So I rode the 3.5 miles to the nursery only to find that they had no more strawberries and would be getting them in the next day. So, I got some really dark pansies so I didn't feel like I had gone that whole way for nothing. However this did not solve my strawberry problem. The next day the weather was bad, so I drove to a different nursery, and got 2 6-packs of strawberries and some black hollyhock seeds and came home and planted them. A couple days later I realized that the melon and the pepper seeds I had tried to start were not going to be growing, so if I wanted to grow those this year I needed to go pick up some plants. Back to the nursery to get at most 8 plants. Well.. I get to the nursery and couldn't decide between cantaloupe and honeydew and also they had another type called ambrosia, which as best I can tell is the accidental cross I made last year by planting my cantaloupes and honeydews too close together, it was a really tasty mistake, so I got one of those too. Lucky for me, I could buy just one, unlike the cantaloupe and honeydew which only come in 6-packs. I picked out a 6-pack of golden bell peppers and then realized I had never tried to grow eggplant... maybe that would work out here... another 6-pack. I also noticed that they had a variety of strawberry I'd never seen before.. 8 more plants into the cart. They had just opened several bags of ladybugs, and they were all over my plants-- bonus! I went in to pay and passed the seed rack... hmmm daikon radishes, that could be cool.. in they went. So I came home with 33 plants plus the radish seeds, which really in the grand scheme of things, 33 is a very close number to 8.

Solar Oven!

I made a solar oven this week. I found all kinds of plans at:http://solarcooking.org/plans/ I chose one that I could do quickly that I had all the materials already on hand for because I was ansy and wanted to start cooking for free. :) Aside from the egg below, I've cooked a frozen burrito and made some smores. I want to try bread and some other things, but the sourdough starter I'm making still has 2 more days of rotting on the counter before it's ready.

The solar cooker

An egg from Nightcrawler, straight out of the coop

In the solar cooker after a few minutes

After about 18 minutes, the egg is cooked!

Pictures of the chicken pen and more

A view of the new pen
Here is an image of the new pen to keep the chicken poop where it belongs. The chickens have reacted surprisingly well. I had been braced for hours of squawking in protest of being denied access to many of their favorite spots, but it hasn't happened yet. (knock knock) It's recommended that you have about 11 total square feet per bird (4 in the coop and 7 in the run) and these chickens have about 150 square feet each, a regular Beverly Hills.
The chickens kicking back
The view from the pen includes many of the newly planted trees. Right now they mostly look like sticks with little green buds starting to come out. I hope they make lots of fruit. Fresh fruit is one of my favorite things, and so is free stuff, so free fresh fruit is pretty high up on my list of stuff that is the opposite of lame. Conversely, my husband is the only person in existence that hates peaches-- not just the fuzz, but the flavor and everything about them. Luckily since I am in charge of the yard, I get the winning vote. :)

New Trees and a chicken pen

I had to go get a crown the other day (tooth not Miss America) and I was really upset, both because it hurt and because I have such good dental hygiene that things like this should be impossible. So to make myself feel better I went and bought a new little peach tree, a Mid Pride variety. I came home and planted it and got so excited that I decided I needed more fruit trees. Today I picked up a Dorsett Golden Apple (which will help with the pollination of my Anna Apple), Beauty Plum, Gold Kist Apricot, Black Mission Fig and a miniature bonanza peach. I am so excited about the new trees. I am still sad over Moxie dying, so this helps a little.
Secondly, my husband and I have decided that chicken free-ranging throughout the yard is just not the best idea. This week we will be building a fence to keep them free ranging in about a quarter of the yard. This way we won't have poop on the back porch and they'll stop tearing up my plants. The chickens are quite vocal when they're unhappy, and I am a bit concerned that they'll be throwing hour long screaming fits over this new confinement. I am crossing my fingers that it goes smoothly.
I haven't taken any pictures yet, hopefully by the end of this week all the new trees will be planted and the fence will be built, then I'll post pictures.

R.I.P. Moxie :'(

Moxie, the nice little hen that never laid an egg, died today. She was 11 months old. I noticed that she was acting a little sick around lunchtime and by dinner she was gone. I think whatever made her die was the same thing that kept her from laying. (She wasn't eggbound, I think it was just a birth defect) I don't really have any good adult photos so here's one from when she was a week or so old. I'm really sad.