Now that we are almost at the summer solstice it is time to begin our winter prep. This process will take us all of the summer and partically into the fall. The things that we will be working on is collecting and cutting wood, collecting and dehydrating food, and gardening so we can process food for the winter.

Solar Dehydrator

Normally I am not starting this early and then I need to work extra hard to dehydrate all the things that we need for the winter. This year we have the temperatures and good weather early on so I am able to start the process earlier.

Another thing that is different this year is we decided not to use the greenhouse. Now one would think this would be a problem, well actucally it has become a great 'problem'. We had lettuce in the greenhouse last year like we do every year. Usually we are not able to collect all the seed so it falls to the ground. Well here is a picture of my 'problem'. Look at all that lettuce. It is everywhere. Now the greenhouse is flooded, which ends up being a great thing. It has provided water for all this lettuce. So I have been able to harvest lettuce early.

This is the lettuce in the greenhouse.

This is the lettuce I have planted by seed. Big difference.

I rince the lettuce and take off the stems. I do this because the dark leaf is the part that will have the most nutrients and it is too hard to dehydrate the thick stems.

Here are three trays of lettuce that I collected from the greenhouse.

This tray is 3/4 lettuce and 1/4 kale. The kale is small. Now that I have picked some off each plant it will begin to produce like crazy. For some reason kale does this. It will wait until I pick it, it is quite small and then once I pick some it grows like crazy. It's like it is waiting for me to start harvest and then it produces because it knows I am going to use it. I don't know maybe I have been off grid too long and I am crazy.

Dried Lettuce and Kale

Here is the dried lettuce and kale. It is considerably smaller.

Jar and Crush

Here is all the lettuce. This is a 1 gallon jar. I could leave it in this condition and just put the lid on. However we need to store as much as possible and we don't have tons of space for a whole bunch of jars like this one. So now I use my hands. After washing my hands, I crush it.

So in the end all of that lettuce produced this much dried lettuce. We will do this at least twice a week for the whole summer so that we can have the greens for the winter. These greens will go into smoothies, soups and on top of anything I cook.

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