Monday, February 16, 2015

Easy Herb Drying

This time of year I start to think about spring and what I need to do to get ready for the rush of farming. I remember not having enough space in my herb hut where I dry my herbs. I have a vinyl covered garage building where I dry herbs and inside I have shelves and tables to hold baskets and to lay out herbs. In our dry climate it usually doesn't take long for the herbs to dry so they rotate through the herb hut pretty quickly. But I still need more SPACE.

Two years ago my husband picked up some bread racks at the ReStore because he thought I might find a use for them. Well, I realized that they make very good herb drying racks; I just don't have enough of these plastic bread trays to fully utilize the racks.

So I asked my husband to make some trays that would fit and he came up with these. They are made from standard molding that is 3 feet long, cut and nailed together with a new nail gun he recently got. On the bottom he stapled down some screen material. The sides of these are about 2 inches high and they fit on the bread racks nicely.The screening on the bottom will let enough air circulate so the herbs can dry.

The above picture is our prototype which seems pretty sturdy and easy to handle. Now he can make a lot of them quickly.  This almost makes me excited about cleaning out the herb hut to get it ready for spring/summer!


3 comments:

Donna Maria @ Indie Business said...

This is great Cindy! What a super way to recycle things, finding ways to use them in your business and to also bring yourself personal joy. So smart and inspiring. Thanks for sharing!

LS said...

Nice! And they'd make nice drying racks for soaps, too!

Renan said...

Cindy, very interesting. I have been thinking about drying herbs. Very timely post for me. So I have a question, since you dry and use herbs you may know the answer. How do folks use fruit pigments for color in their products or for that matter, how do they use fruit in their products WITHOUT using a preservative? Do they dry the fruits then powder the fruit and mix it in? Just thought you might know since you are drying plants!

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