People lived off the land for a long time. Some people still do.

Some people still can.

I like to think that someday together we will plant seeds and pick berries; that we will taste the sugar of dropped fruit still warm from the sun and talk about HTML.

We will be as we were — living by the sun and the Earth.

Drying is the oldest method of preserving food. Even when we didn't know about the relationship between microbes and water we knew that drying things was enough to keep them through the winter. Now that we've got vacuum packaging and other luxuries, we don't use it so much anymore. Unfortunately.

If you're an avid camper, you've probably made your own assortment of jerkies and chips to fit into your pack. Most use devices like drying ovens — there are a number of machines you can use, which consume electricity. But for this we will try not to use electricity: we will use the sun. We will be a community that lives more and uses less. The heat of our star and the brush of dry wind across the Kansas prairie will be enough — usually.

Our winters will be sweetened with the preserves of our spring orchards: this is why people dry food.

Now, dried food doesn't have the appearance or texture of canned food. Dried fruit retains much of the sugar it held while growing on the tree. But if you've eaten apple or banana chips you know that the taste takes a few seconds to hit your buds and is never as intense as it was when it was freshly picked. But it's close enough. Much of what makes a fruit a fruit or a vegetable a vegetable is not the water inside of it. Water takes up space. Dried food is much easier to store. You are not in this for luxury.

A few preliminaries

Fruit is easier to dry than vegetables. Its moisture evaporates more readily and it is safe with higher moisture content because its sugars and acids kill microbes.

Meats can be dried as well, but should be pre-cooked. The antibacterial rule of thumb applies: 160°F through and through. Open fire on shored-up logs should do the trick. Or an oven.

We will be land-dwelling free spirits, but we will not be immune to disease. To sun-dry, a covered drying container is required — this is not difficult. A tray covered with a screen or cheesecloth will retain the sun's heat and protect the food from dirt and insects.

Be patient. Sun-drying food takes between three and seven days. Start drying before you're hungry.

Optimally, you want bright sun, low humidity, and temperatures around 100°F. Don't try to dry outdoors if the conditions aren't right. You'll just spoil the food. Keep a food dryer on hand because the weather will not cooperate.

Preparation

Prepare the food to be dried immediately after harvesting. Dry food that is sufficiently ripe — anything that's fit for the table is fit for drying.

Fruits with pits should be halved and pitted and cut into thin, even pieces. Berries with tough rind will need to be 'cracked' to allow moisture to escape. Dip the berries in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds, then dip them in very cold water. Thermal expansion and contraction will be too much for the skins; they will crack like winter hands, exposing the flesh.

Oxygen makes fruitflesh ugly. It's why apples turn brown: oxidation. Antioxidants prevent oxidation.

Ascorbic acid — Vitamin C — is an antioxidant. One to two teaspoons of ascorbic acid mixed in a cup of water and sprinkled over the cut fruit will help prevent oxidation. This will require a trip to the drugstore, and some time opening vitamin C tablets. Lemon juice will work adequately. Vinegar, too. If that's out of the question, slightly oxidized fruit never killed anyone.

Now, if you want to play with more obscure chemicals, you can treat the food with a sulfite solution: add one to two tablespoons of sodium bisulfite to a gallon of water, stir thoroughly, and soak the fruit slices for five to ten minutes. Sulfite treatment is the most effective way to prevent oxidation, but it's also the most difficult.

Veggies are a slightly different story. First, there's no point in drying things like carrots and potatoes that will keep fresh in a cool basement for an extended period without any tampering. Save your energy for productive things.

Wash your veggies thoroughly and cut out the bad spots. Then blanch them. This means expose them to hot water — either by boiling them in a pot for a few minutes or spraying them with steam.

Almost all veggies need to be blanched. Dry them unblanched, and their enzymes will destroy their color and flavor. Don't worry about mushrooms or onions — they're fine without blanching.

Boiling things takes the nutrients out of them. If you boil veggies, save the water for stew. Stew is your friend.

Meat. Protein. We have not evolved to eat meat — we have evolved away from it. We have lost teeth and digestive organs. Meat we used to eat during the Ice Age would make gas station beef jerky look like butter. A modern man would grind the teeth out of his head in a year. But we still need meat. We still like meat.

Naturally, drying meat is a hairier endeavor than drying apples and okra. Bacteria like meat too.

Any lean meat will do. Fish and poultry are good; beef and venison are the best. Yes, we will eat deer. In any case, cut off any fat and connective tissue. These turn rancid easily.

If you shoot something, freeze it for a month to stave off trichinosis infection.

Wood and flesh are the same: they've both got grain. Muscle fibers have it in their nature to point in the same direction. Cut with the grain to keep the meat from turning brittle when it dries. Crunchy jerky is no good. Cut strips one-eighth to one-quarter inch thick, one to one-and-a-half inches wide, and four to twelve inches long. Buy a bag of jerky at the supermarket and you'll find that most of its pieces don't meet these dimensions. But they've been through machines.

Seasoning is in order: salt and pepper for starters. Go easy. You don't want salt sticks that happen to taste like meat.

Unfortunately, it's not a good idea to dry meat in the sun. You'll want to put it in a drying oven set above 140°F at all times.

Drying

In California, drying is easy. Summer temperatures hover around 115°F and there is no humidity. We may as well use ovens here.

Kansas — now that's a different story. There is humidity and temperatures are lower. The sun and the air won't always cut it, as much as we'd like it to.

Sun drying is easy. Use the drying rack with cheesecloth or screen. Space your food slices appropriately. Wait a few days.

But drying ovens and food dryers are a bit more complex. Using a standard range oven is much more costly than if you were to just can the food yourself. But we are about economy. Next to the sun, the best way to dry is with a convection oven.

Don't dry too quickly. The food ends up with dry outsides and moist insides.

Air can hold only so much moisture. Moisture comes from the food and fills the air. After it accumulates in the air it returns to the food. The solution is ventilation. Don't stick the oven in a corner — let it breathe.

You will never get things to dry uniformly. Never. Some things on the same tray will be too dry, some will be just right, some will be too moist. This is why you condition after you dry. More on this in a minute. But you can minmize the disparity in food dryness by shifting and rearranging during the drying process.

If you're using a convection oven, preheat it to 125°F, gradually increasing the temperature to 140°. Place food on trays and stack trays in the dryer, no less than two inches apart. Drying takes four to twelve hours.

Storage

You'll need to test your food for dryness before storing it. Let it cool before testing it. Warm things feel moist when they're dry.

Dried fruit should be like leather. Tear a piece in half; you should find no moisture inside.

Dried vegetables are brittle like glass. Hit them with a hammer and they shatter.

Dried meat is brown or black. It bends and snaps like a green twig.

Like I said before, things will never dry uniformly. Conditioning redistributes a batch's moisture more evenly. After your food cools, put in a large closed container, like a coffee can. Put the container in a warm, dry room. Once a day for about a week stir the food around. Water from overmoist pieces finds its way to the overdry pieces. More moves to fill less.

If you find condensation on the walls of your container, you didn't dry your food enough.

Food dried outside — especially meat — will need to be pasteurized. Put it in the oven at 175°F for fifteen minutes or freeze it for two weeks.

Store food packed tightly in small quantities in airtight containers. Try to keep it out of the light. A basement or a kitchen cupboard are good places. If you treated your fruit with sulfite before drying it, keep it out of contact with metal. Metal reacts with sulfur; the taste is bad.

Meat and veggies should keep for six months. Fruits will stay good for about a year. If you see mold, throw away the whole batch.

For our quest
For our family

unperson adds that it's possible to dry meat without heat application, as demonstrated in an episode of Good Eats referenced here.

Ohio State University
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/5347.html

Solar Cooking
http://solarcooking.org/dryingreview.htm

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://www.ag.uiuc.edu/~vista/html_pubs/DRYING/dryfood.html

Backwoods Home
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/shaffer58.html

New Mexico State University
http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu/pubs/_e/e-322.html

University of Minnesota
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/nutrition/DJ0820.html