AWOL and thanks for the nekkid dancing...

My apologies for being AWOL - did anyone miss me??  😂

Things have been pretty hectic here - not only with the business, and some community issues, but also with harvesting.

My main crop every year is tomatoes.  Not necessarily to eat only fresh, but I grow as many as possible to preserve.

 Yellow heirloom tomatoes - in all their magnificent glory :D

There is nothing nicer than adding home made tomato puree and tomato concentrate to all those winter dishes - the privilege of last years harvest dances over my tongue with every mouthful.

The golden yellow heirloom tomatoes are generally
 great big brutes - just the way I like 'em ;)

My favourite tomato is a golden yellow heirloom...

I simmer the tomato mixture until it is good and thick

...as it makes the most gorgeous, golden-red tomato concentrate.

Tomato concentrate in recycled plastic tubs all ready to go into
 the freezer.  Those tubes are re-used, and re-used until they fall
 apart - and only then are they sent for recycling

Apart from water-bathing jars of concentrate, I also shove 125gm tubs of it into the freezer.  I find making bottled whole tomatoes a waste of time because when they are decanted, as we don't eat that many pizza's, they are mainly only suitable for "blitzing" into a sauce anyway.

Spiralized butternut dehydrating in the Foothills DryAway

I've also had fun spiralizing home-grown organic butternut and dehydrating it in the Foothills DryAway.

This is precisely why I made the middle shelf in the Foothills
 DryAway.  So that any food that dropped through the drying
  net could easily be retrieved.

When the butternut spirals are dry they resemble butternut tagliatelli 😃  Storing that in a preserving jar in the larder frees up freezer space for my tomato concentrate lol

To get to my "thanks for dancing nekkid" bit in the title of this blog post - kymber and Jam kindly performed a nekkid rain dance all the way across the planet in Framboise, Canada.

kymber - thank you my friend - it worked 😂

Four days later we had 40mm of rain... 

Oh - we waited so long for this sight...

Even the alpacas enjoyed the shower

...glorious rain.

It was enough of a sudden downpour to fill our dam by a third.

40mm of rain filled the dam by a third...

Although the water didn't last too long as the dried out shell quickly absorbed most of it resulting in the dam being almost empty again, it's also not surprising given the heat we've recently been experiencing.

...and caused the grass / grazing to turn a welcome
 greener colour

At least the rain caused the "grass" turned a little greener than dried out brown and is showing some sign of growth - especially in the alpaca paddocks. 😊

kymber and Jam - please, feel free to continue dancing nekkid - we need much, much more to come even halfway close to last's years rainfall...





For more info on how you can obtain your own Foothills DryAway solar / wind food dehydrator please click the link.