The ULTIMATE PREPPER TOOL! Keeps food for 25 years without refrigeration!

today on the stoney ridge farm channel we're going to be putting squash up for the winter and we're not freezing it and turning it into mush we're going to freeze dry it it's going to be awesome i ain't afraid i ain't afraid to play i ain't afraid to get the job hey there folks this is josh stoney ridge farmer welcome back to the bounty of the farm it's so beautiful out here guys today i'm out in the squash patch and here's what you get when you raise squash i can't eat all this so we end up sharing a lot of squash with the neighbors and we end up throwing a lot of squash into the chicken coop and feeding the chickens it's good for the chickens but it's not so good for the guy that works so hard to grow this squash so what we're going to do today is we're going to talk a little bit about preserving okay so the ultimate prepper machine is in my garage right now and it's called a harvest right freeze dryer what we're going to be doing is taking the squash cutting it up and freeze drying it so it will be shelf stable for 25 years that means no refrigeration not canning it not freezing it and turning it into mush now if you know when you freeze squash like this it just turns to mush when you cook it so today we're going to show you guys how a freeze dryer works and how we're going to be saving our bounty of squash pretty much every day i'm picking this much squash out of the garden and i'll have a bounty of squash to cook all winter long now and it'll taste delicious and retain its nutritive value which is really important to me i know i can go to the store and buy it but it's not as good as what i grew at home let's have some fun so i'm out here in my shop in my garage and this is the harvest right freeze drier i'm going to get you some close-ups of this thing and i'll explain exactly how it works to you also got a pretty cool knife set we're going to show you today we've got a day sponsor so we'll show you that also but first let's walk around and we'll show you the harvest right freeze dryer this is i believe the extra large we've got one two three four trace i think it's the large model we'll open it up i'll just get you in here a little closer and show you this is a vacuum chamber okay this vacuum chamber is locked and latched closed and this is a rubber gasket you got to make sure that rubber gasket is is sealed up tight that's the menu right there it's pretty simple all you got to do is hit the start button these are the trays that we're going to be putting our food in what we want to do is ensure that our trays are completely full before we start this critter up okay the way this works this is a vacuum chamber okay in other words it freezes under vacuum and this is a vacuum pump this is the pump that comes with this machine so we'll cut this squash up in little pieces about that big around and about that thick and what it's going to do is almost instantly freeze them okay it's going to freeze them and then it's going to pull the vacuum and start sucking all of the moisture out of our squash up here and again making it shelf stable now this squash is a little bit large but i think i'm going to try it anyway so that's how the harvest right freeze dryer works it just plugs into a regular 110 outlet on the back side right here your vacuum pump is ran off of the power from the harvest right freeze dryer and there's an on off switch pretty simple stuff now when we get done i'll show you what we put the squash in so these are oxygen absorbers guys and these go inside these bags they're called mylar bags eight by 12 mylar bags and this is what we store our harvest right food in okay so that's a uv resistant bag right there and again this will make food shelf stable for up to 25 years so the enemy of any preserved food like this is going to be moisture and oxygen and that's why we put the oxygen absorbers in there okay it's really humid outside and we want to bag these up when it's nice and cool and try to do it in low humidity so we'll open this guy up we're going to put our cutting board down right here we're going to go ahead and start cutting up squash and loading our trays this is really fun guys take this little guy set him over to the side just like that this will get warm okay this vacuum pump will get warm while this gets cold so you got to pay attention you don't want to do this in a really hot building all right this is our cutting board and let me show you these are kamikito knives this is today's day sponsor guys and i am telling you look at how gorgeous this knife set is really cool this is something i'm going to be using in the butcher shop we're building a butcher shop right now so all this stuff will be moved into a commercial kitchen butcher shop right back here behind us but today for cutting up our squash i think we're just going to use this critter right here this is sharp super super sharp let me get something and i'll show you how sharp these are i'll post a link to these and i'm trying to get a discount code for you guys in case you want to pick yourself up a really good japanese knife set here's how sharp the knife is wow be careful if you decide to get one of these all right let's cut up some squash and have some fun okay and what we're gonna do here is we're gonna cut our squash fairly thin okay and the goal here with cutting our squash fairly thin i'm talking about maybe one inch thick okay and that's so that it all dries evenly you want to be consistent with your cuts some of these aren't so consistent man that knife is nice we'll fill all of these trays that's one squash and it's going to basically fill half a tray one small squash so got some zucchini here we're gonna try that too what you guys need to know about freeze drying versus dehydrating from the dehydrator is that we're not cooking the food we're actually freezing it in the current state that it is and we're retaining more nutrient and you know when we grow a garden for ourselves we're growing it because it's high in nutrients okay it's good quality it's not that garbage that you buy in the grocery store food from the garden from a home-grown garden tastes so much better so when we rehydrate these they will have retained most of their nutritive value versus freezing them in the freezer and trying to cook them they just turned a mush now that might be good for zucchini bread or squash bread but it's not so good for eating squash just like it's fresh out of the garden not only can you put vegetables in here you can put meat you can put all sorts of stuff in here it will keep before we load our trays in we're going to hit start right there cooling vacuum chamber okay we'll close this guy down and this thing will start cooling off once it gets cold after about 15 minutes we're gonna load our trays in tells me to load the food open her up load my trays close it up get a good seal right there hit continue there it is we'll see you in 24 to 48 hours so it's the next day let me show you what the harvest right freeze dryer is doing it's gone through several cycles uh the cycle of freezing then heating back up and right now it's in the drying mode right here i'll show you real quick so it says drying it tells you how long it's got about four hours and 13 minutes left you can see inside there they just shrunk up a little bit you see ice on the insides right here so the vacuum pump is sucking all the moisture out of the food the moisture is sticking to the wall on the inside and at the end of this process it will melt off that ice which is all the water that was in the food and it'll come out this little drain plug right here it's when i have a bucket sitting right there so we probably have another five hours or so this has been going for about 24 hours now and we're just about to load up on squash again and restart it so this thing runs almost constantly when it comes to harvest season here on the stoney ridge so that's what we've got it's gonna look great we're at hour number 30 now and everything is freeze-dried so the machine tells you right here it's time process complete open the drain this is the drain right here so we will open that you'll hear it hiss and do it slowly that opens up and you'll see this rubber seal kind of back off a little bit and then we can open it up and test it we would hit the defrost button right here but first we want to open her up and just take a quick check we'll just pull one out oh it's light as a feather keep drain open continue now this is what you get this is light as a feather like a cereal marshmallow almost so a healthy snack if you just want to munch it as a snack or you can reconstitute it with water and we'll show you guys in a future video how you can reconstitute it with water actually i'm going to take a piece in right now so when i get done i'll put these into mylar bags and i'll seal them this kit comes with a sealer from harvest right right here so we slap them in the mylar bags we put those little oxygen tabs in there and then it's good for up to 25 years of shelf life i'm actually going to pull one of these guys out we're going to take it inside the house real quick and i'll show you reconstituting it with water that is the harvest right freeze dryer this is the ultimate prepper machine guys i can keep my squash for 25 years if you have something like this and you keep this running constantly during the summer you will never run out of food expect some more content with the harvest right freeze dryer i've got some shallots to do we're going to try out some meat we're going to try all sorts of stuff to make it shelf stable we don't have to refrigerate it we just keep it in a cool dry place and this food is going to be delicious just like i'd cook any squash we'll go a medium heat i'm going to put a little bit of avocado oil on here just like so avocado oil has a higher burning or scorching temperature so we'll let that heat up we're going to go ahead and we're going to reconstitute this in a plate so ran a little water in this plate and we're just going to lay it over in here floats as you can tell what this does and and what's important to know here is that the freeze dryer preserves the food in the state that it was as soon as you put it in there in other words you don't lose the nutritive value of your food like you do if you cook it or if you dehydrate it with the dehydrator the dehydrator will warm it up and you don't take all of the moisture out moisture is the enemy oxygen is the enemy that's what grows the bacteria that causes food to rot we're eliminating the rot factor we've gone from this which is basically powder it just makes it into powder okay if you want to make some squash or zucchini bread this would be awesome too so we're going from that to this within a minute and a half a little black pepper that's how i cook squash we'll brown it flip it and eat it you'll notice i've got a bit of a cast iron problem here i've got a little cast iron collection problem look oh my goodness love my cast iron flip this guy over yep nice and brown on the plate we go what does it taste like what's the consistency that's what i'm concerned with just like squash we want squash we don't want squish to get my drift not quite as good as just fresh out of the garden but guys you can store it for 25 years so that's awesome thank you all so much for joining me here on the stoney ridge farm today please hit that like button subscribe the channel i'd love to have you back here with me we're gonna do a lot more fun stuff in the garden this year take care [Music] hey there folks this is josh stoney ridge yeah your camera went dark i'm going to move the freeze dryer up and when we open the door it'll be right here no i'm not because the kubota's in the way