I would like to try to build a solar food dryer, but I don't know where to get stainless steel screen for high acid foods like tomatoes. I have been to the local hardware store and lumber yards but they don't carry it.

-- Rose (r.1@juno.com), December 18, 2000

Answers

Go to this website: http://www.manytracks.com/

Click on Gardening, then scroll down to the index, and click on #8 - Spring 1995. There is an article about solar food drying, and it gives a source for stainless steel screen.

Hope that helps! And poke around the whole site, lots of homesteading stuff. The site owner, Sue Robishaw, has written many articles for Countryside.

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), December 18, 2000.

There was a recent article about solar food dryers, in Countryside magazine, written by Larisa Walk, and she gave a source of stainless steel screen. The last time we bought some, we bought 100 feet of it or so, and had a bunch of friends get together and build 6 or 8 solar food dryers according to Larisa's directions. I don't recall where we got the screen, but I think it is the place that Larisa recommended. (She is a friend of ours, and helped us with our group building project a few years ago.) If you can't find the source, p-mail me and I will look it up at home, but it may take a while as my files are a mess due to remodeling.

Jim

-- Jim (jiminwis@yahoo.com), December 19, 2000.

Yeah, the source I cited has the info by Larisa Walk. I guess Sue Robishaw knows her too. They both come to the MREA Energy Fair. I don't care what others say -- Wisconsin IS a great place to live!

-- Joy Froelich (dragnfly@chorus.net), December 19, 2000.