Cl6—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, September 13,1980
Food drying
(Continued from Page CIS)
TOMATOES Loosen and remove skins and cut the
tomatoes into slices or halves. Steam for 3 minutes. Dry in
a dehydrator for 3-5 hours, oven 6-8 hours or sun, 8-10
hours.
PEARS—To dry pears, cut in half lengthwise and core.
Cut into quarters or eighths. Treat with ascorbic acid.
Steam blanch for 5-20 minutes or treat in a sodium
bisulfite solution. Spread m a single layer and start drying
at 140* F. Increase the temperature to 150* F. If possible,
reduce to 140° F. for the last hour. Dry until springy and
suede-like. Halves should be dried 15 hours, slices, 6
hours.
APRICOTS Dry fully ripened but not soft apncots.
Wash, cut in half, and pit. Do not peel. To prevent
darkening, coat with ascorbic acid solution or sodium
bisulfite for 10-20 minutes depending on size and npeness.
Arrange the apncots in a single layer on trays, pit side up.
Under controlled heat, start at 130° F, and gradually
finish at 150* F. Drying tune for halves is up to 12 hours
until leathery and pliable.
PEACHES Any good freestone variety of peach
which is ripe but not soft may be dried. Peel, cut in half
and pit. If desired, cut in quarters or slices. To prevent
darkening, use the ascorbic acid solution. Steam blanch
halves for 10 minutes, slices 5-7 minutes, or sodium
bisolfite halves in solution 15-30 minutes. Arrange in a
layer, pit side up and start under controlled heat at 125° F.
Increase heat to 155* F. Dry until leathery and pliable.
Drying tune is 12-15 hours for halves and 6 hours for slices.
PEANUTS Before frost in the fall, dig entire peanut
plants with the peanuts attached to the roots. Hang the
plants in a dry airy place. Remove the pods when they are
well dried and roast at 350° F. for about 20 minutes. Store
the peanuts in the pods m a cool, dry place, or shell them
and keep in sealed containers.
HOT PEPPERS Pick hot peppers when they are
mature and red. String and hang them in a dry warm, airy
place or pull the entire plants and hang them. Be careful
not to get juice on your skin or in your eyes. It can bum.
Store completely dry peppers on their strings in a handy
warm, airy place. Or seal them in small, airtight con
tainers. A little hot pepper goes a long way.
SUNFLOWERS Protect maturing heads with
cheesecloth or bags to keep birds away. Harvest the heads
before heavy frost. Let them dry further m a warm, airy
place. Then shell the seeds and store them in tight con
tainers.
MISCELLANEOUS Celery leaves, parsley, mint,
sage, onion tops and cress are easily dried. Wash them
well, dram and wipe off excess water. Place on racks and
dry very slowly in an oven or food dryer.
Making your own convenience foods and seasonings is
simple with food drying techniques. Seasomng salts, in
stant soup mix, salad enhancer, commeal, parsley flakes,
dried mushrooms, dip chips, energy snacks and herbs are
all covered in an information sheet prepared by the
Lancaster County Extension Office, called Creative
Drying Economics. For a copy, call 717/394-6851 or write,
Lancaster County Extension Office, 1383 Arcadia Road,
Room 1, Lancaster, PA 17601.
The Bureau of Census has
been playing games with the
farm count, and so Delaware
now has more farms than it
used to have. Preliminary
reports recently released on
the 1978 Census of
Agriculture list the state as
having 3615 farms. That’s
215 more than it had when
the 1974 census was tallied.
There aren’t really more
farms-it’s just the way
they’re being counted.
Census bureau officials call
it “a significant im
provement in data collection
procedures.” But in straight
talk it has to mean that the
1974 census was wrong, and
hopefully, the 1978 census is
right.
Using the new
calculations, the census
folks have recalculated
Delaware’s farm numbers
for 1974 and they figure that
instead of 3400 farms, there
were probably as many as
3580. They don’t bother to
explain why the state
sprouted some 35 additional
farms since then.
At any rate, the 1978
census shows those farms
with an average $89,000 m
farm sales from 189 acres,
valued at $268,000.
As usual, the census data
shows poultry and poultry
products as Delaware’s big
farm income earlier
more than 193 million
dollars. That was 60 percent
of that year’s farm income,
crops took a distant backseat
at 102 million.
There’s a small flaw in the
census data for Delaware
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since it considers the farm
value of company-owned
broilers as farm income. The
statisticians take that
hypothetical value and add it
in with actual farm sales of
things tike hogs and
soybeans, to come up with a
grand total of 324 million
dollars in total farm sales.
That, then, is divided among
the 3615 farms to get the
average per farm.
It’s a bit of statistical
hocus-pocus, which leaves a
lot of farmers wondering
what happened to their share
of sales. And it has to be a
little confusing to any
dedicated farm watcher who
knows that actual farm sales
are being averaged in with
statistically assigned farm
values.
Here are some other data
out of the 1978 Census of
Agriculture that sheds a
little light on the Delaware
farm picture: 3,155 farms
out of 3615 were operated by
individuals or families; 287
were partnerships and only
160 were corporations. Of
those corporations 144 were
family owned. Nine out of 10
farmers owned all or part of
the farms they were
operated and more than six
out of 10 listed farming as
their principle occupation.
Three-fourths lived on the
farms they operated, and 237
Delaware farms were
operated by women and a
fourth of all farms had sales
of $lOO,OOO or more.
More data on the 1978
Census of Agriculture will be
forthcoming when the final
report is issued. *No doubt
SAWDUST DAYS!
SEPT. 18.19,20
THURS. 8-9; FRI. 8-10;
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there will be more data than
5* rea “ y " a ” tS “
The preliminary report,
however, gives the feeling
that agriculture continues to v
prosper in the First State,
with the number of farms, F
size and value of farms in
creasing, and total farm qhOWINO ICTTt*
sales a staggering sum.
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