Apples, apples, and more apples!

Found a local, small scale grower of apples, he grows about a dozen different varieties. He retired and this is his retirement career.

I supported him and bought a box (40 lbs) of apples along with 3 more gallons of cyder.  So far I've spent the last few days dehydrating apple slices, making apple sauce, and apple butter. Lots of fun and the smells are great. So far I've canned 3 points of apple sauce and 3 jars of apple butter. I need to spice up the apple sauce more... But the butter is great!

Dehydrating berries

On the way back from taking the dog to the local 5-acre dog park, we stopped and picked some late season strawberries and early season raspberries. Both are so yummy! I decided to dehydrate a test batch. The strawberries came out really weird looking (but still taste good) and the raspeberries came out good. I'm looking forward to move berry picking since I want to make more jam/jelly and do some berry cyders.

First batch of fruit leather

My neighbor loaned/gave me an American Harvest Food Dehydrator they had laying about in a closet. So I started a batch of blueberry/strawberry fruit leather last night. 4 cups of blueberries, 1 cup of strawberries, 1/4 cup of my bees honey, and 1 tbsp of almond extract (which I spilled all over myself). I may have made it a little too thick. This is the recipe I used.

Started it around 10pm last night, when I left the house @ 7 am today it was still slightly gooey but smelled good. I asked my wife to check it around 10 and turn it off if it seems done. I'm curious how it will turn out. The puree tasted good last night. I remember my Mom making fruit leather when I was a kid and I enjoyed it back then (it also was a high value lunch time trade item).

Strawberry jam... yum..

I canned 4 pints of strawberry jam last Sat night. Turned out soo sweet and good. Of course it used 7 cups of sugar to 5 cups of crushed berries. Was not to hard to do, just have to keep to the recipe and follow the steps carefully. I will definitely be doing this again.
I also canned 2 lb. of salted/unsalted butter into 5 half pint jars. Supposedly it will keep 1 yr and I can use this camping (I hate soggy butter). Shall see how it goes.
I did a small tweak on my solar dehydrator and tested it with slices from a large zucchini. The slices dried nicely, but tasted bad. Probably because the zucchini was so large and going to seed.