Photography by Justine Hand.
An autumn tradition in my family, our annual walk on the “Battlefield Road” retraces the footsteps of Paul Revere from Lexington to Concord. But with no refrigeration, it was also time to prepare for the long, hard winter, preserving food by pickling, salting, and drying.
Each October at Hartwell Tavern, a preserved 18th century house and gathering place along the Battlefield Road, historic re-enactors demonstrate authentic methods of colonial food preparation and preservation. Carrots, onions, broccoli, peas, almost any vegetable can be dried.
Strung using a large needle and kitchen twine, fresh and dried mushrooms hang in the sun at Hartwell Tavern in Lincoln, MA.
Back home, we gathered supplies.
With their small fingers, children are ideal candidates for stringing vegetables.
Solvi, 5, works on mushrooms.
After one strand each, Oliver and Solvi were still raring to go, so they switched vegetables and started again.
There is almost nothing more charming than the sight of your children stringing vegetables.
After our vegetables were strung, we simply found a sunny, dry spot (our kitchen window) in which to hang them.
A few days later we decided to try drying apples.
After a couple of weeks we had dried food.
Stored in sterilized antique canning jars, our dried vegetables should keep all winter.
For more authentic colonial food preservation and other handy household tips, the folks at Minute Man National Park recommended the improved The Servant Directory or House-Keepers Campanion.
Unlike my recent foray into colonial candle making, which was fun but labor-intensive, drying vegetables in the tradition of our fore-mothers was quite easy.
DIY: Dry Vegetables Like a Colonist