Sunday, September 15, 2013

Tomatoes and Chicken Jail

I added some features to my solar dehydrator: a chimney and an intake tube.  Both help move hot air through the thing. The intake tube in particular, in the afternoon sun really heats up and has hot air pushing out the top.

The trays are made from old onion bags. I'm surprised at how long it takes to dry out the tomatoes. They smell fabulous during the process.

Saving them in olive oil: 

Gave up on the pasture for the chickens. They were getting comfortable getting out and going on long walks in the morning. That's not a big deal this time of year, but if there were berries out, I'd have lost them. They did manage to find the few tomato plants that weren't fenced in.   
So I built a 'chicken tractor' as they call them.  a fully enclosed pen that is light and moves every day, so they have new ground and weeds to get at and destroy. I left the back end open so I simply move their hen house up against that end and they can go in and out as they want.  This ends the need for a timer for the door, and getting up in the morning to let them out.  A good trade off. 

Another photo of the whole 'chicken jail', with my glove in one corner. 

No comments:

Design Mistakes in my cob house

So, I have long meant to create a list of mistakes I made when designing the finishings on our house.  Now that we've lived in it for a ...