Adventures in Dehydrating

I never thought I’d be the kind of person who gets heart‑eyes over countertop appliances, yet here I am… fully smitten with a dehydrator. A dehydrator. But honestly? This little workhorse is becoming one of the most important tools on the farm.

Growing fresh veg, herbs, and flowers is already one of the most rewarding parts of my life – but taking those beautiful, fresh harvests and turning them into shelf‑stable pantry magic feels like the natural next step for Cattywampus Farm. I want to create farm‑grown pantry products, soup kits, toppers, herb blends, mushroom powders, chips, and whatever else my chaotic brain dreams up. And the best way to do that is with a dehydrator.

But let me tell you… this fucker takes FOREVER to actually get things completely dry. I don’t know if it’s a Texas humidity thing, a tiny hotbox house thing, or if my dehydrator is just too small to work as hard as I need it to. Or maybe dehydrating just does take forever and I need to get over it. Either way, I’m learning – slowly – and since I’m learning, I figured I might as well document the whole adventure for anyone who wants to follow along.

Thanks to August (the month where gardens go to die), I haven’t had much of my own harvest to dehydrate yet. So I’ve been practicing with whatever I can get: neighbor‑grown goodies, the occasional backyard rescue veg, and of course, offerings from the MegaChurch of Texas: HEB.

So far I’ve dehydrated what feels like all the herbs, plus bell peppers, okra, jalapeños, corn, tomatoes, and my own mushrooms. These are all test batches – experiments to learn the process, dial in the temps, and figure out what works and what absolutely does not.

I’m terrible at remembering to take pictures while I’m doing things (dehydrating, mushroom tent setups, literally everything), but I’ll do my best to update this page whenever I have something interesting to share – successes, failures, weird discoveries, and all the farm‑chaos in between.

Welcome to Adventures in Dehydrating – where Cattywampus Farm goes from fresh harvest to pantry magic, one slow, stubborn batch at a time.

Explore the Adventures

Here’s everything I’m dehydrating, experimenting with, and occasionally messing up: