Tomatoes after 20 hours in the dehydrator


Ok, so we didn't get the roosters or the rabbit butchered this weekend. We are hoping to get them done on Tuesday since my husband doesn't have to work. It might be better that way too since our soon will be at school. He isn't too attached to the roosters but the rabbit was supposed to be one of his. We had thought that it was a girl and he named "her" Phoebe....well now it is Pheobo. A big no no is naming an animal that you plan to butcher. We have 2 wethers that are named lunch meat and meat stick. They are out eating and being happy with the other goats but we try not to interact with them too much. One of our goats, Paprika (like the spice or the baby from Blues Clues) has gotten enormous! She has been running with our buckling boer goat and the buckling dairy goat that we have, but is possible that she was bred before we got her. Paprika was quite thin when she came to live with us at the beginning of July. I went back and looked at the pictures and cannot believe how skinny she was. We thought that maybe she had something called bloat....a goat has something called a rumen. It is a big fermentation vat for their food, but it also produces carbon dioxide and methane gas which they need to release either by belching or tooting. Yes, not very polite on the goats part, but they do need to release that gas or the goat can die. Now the dairy goat that we purchased in May must have miscarried in July as we had thought she might have. She was with the lady's buck from April 1-May 9th so with the 150 day gestation that would put her last possible due date as today. No signs that she is going to give birth so hopefully the bucklings that we have her with have done their job! We really want some goats milk. I love to cook, bake and experiment with foods in the kitchen. It would be great to be able to make cheese, yogurt and maybe even some goats milk soap. With the price of cheese too it would be nice to be able to save money where ever we can. The picture above is the tomatoes that I started in the dehydrator yesterday. It takes quite a while for them to dry out since tomatoes are full of moisture but in about 20 hours they are done. I had a few that needed to be dried a bit more. They get nice and dry and leathery when they are done. Last week I made some bread and added some chopped dehydrated tomato and some basil in the bread and it was delicious!