Author: beautifulchaosorg

Hi, I am Carolien and I am a Dutch woman trying to build a self sufficient homestead on concrete and rubble. Follow my husband and me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@straverhomestead9667

Making tomato powder for the first time

The tomato powder did not turn out quite right

We had some more tomatoes as we would eat trough and I saw a video of someone making tomato powder, which is nice to season food with and is a space saving storage way, so I wanted to try that out.

The amount of tomatoes I used did not quite fill up my dehydrator, but that is fine. I am just trying this out to see how it turns out and if I will be using the tomato powder at all.

Since I also had a lot of small tomatoes, the cutting took quite some time. I had set the dehydrator on 70°C for about 15 hours. I will be using the tomato powder in cooking, so there is no advantage in using a lower temperature.

Wooden cutting board with tomato slices and a rack from a dehydrator with tomato slices, lying on a table

After the dehydrator finished, I checked a few tomato slices and thought they where perfectly dry, but, while putting all of the dried tomato slices into my food processor, I noticed not all tomato slices where dry enough. I also do not know if the food processor is the right tool for this, but I did not really get a powder. I have more like some what sticky tomato crumbles, but that is ok, they will be used anyway. Just to be on the safe side, I will be storing this jar in the refrigerator.

Tomato crumbles in a jar

For next year, if I will have enough tomatoes, I should check more of the tomato slices to see if they are dry enough and just let the dehydrator run maybe an hour longer or so.

Apple harvest fall 2024

Many many apples, apple moth maggots, making apple sauce and lots of apple juice

The large apple trees that where already on our property when we bought it are packed with apples again (last year we hat very little apples). A lot of apples started falling, but with that abundance hanging on the tree it was hardly noticeable. We gave a lot of the fallen fruit to the sheep, who loved it, and we started making apple sauce with the most useful apples. The apples falling from the trees where apples with maggots from the apple moth, so the first few batches of apple sauce needed some honey, since the apples where not really ripe yet and the apple sauce was a bit to sour for our taste.

At some point a lot of apples without maggots fell from the trees and we noticed that they where already ripe, earlier in the season as they where in previous years. We got ourselves an appointment at the juicing company and collected all of the apples from the ground for more apple sauce. This was the biggest batch of apple sauce I made at once so far. I filled a 15 litre pot until the edge with cubes of apples and boiled the apples with some apple juice until tender. I pureed the apple sauce, since we like it smooth and water bath canned 6 batches at 90°C for 30 min. (Weck-Style). For me this was a day’s work.

A big pot with apple sauce
Weck-Jars filled with apple sauce, stacked together

Over the course of several weeks we made a lot of apple sauce, but if it will be enough for the whole year…., time will tell.

After the apple sauce making and canning marathon, we picked all of the apples out of the three big apple trees we have. This took the better part of the day and filled up 15 grain bags. We ended up with 330 litres of apple juice, which is a lot more than we had 2 years ago, which is great, since we went out of apple juice early this summer. Maybe now we will have enough for the coming 2 years.

As with the plums we had been clearing as much of the apples with maggots in them as we could and we will have to keep an eye on things after apples start forming in the spring again. When fruit start falling again in the spring we will have to clear them to keep the maggot pressure low for the next season.

New addition to our dwarf goats

We got 3 new female dwarf goats to companion our dwarf goat couple

The 3 dwarf goats on the right are the new additions. The 2 black dwarf goats are twins and the white dwarf goat has black and brown spots and the horns have 2 different colours.

We are already looking forward to baby goats this winter.