Phase One of Mission One: Plans: Complete

The date is November 18^th, 2010 and I finally look at an email I received and I read it. It tells me that the watershed partnership our Environmental Networks helps with wants us to come and watch No Impact Man with them. I can’t believe I didn’t read this before! I’m very suddenly set on going.

They had a superb trail mix on the table when we arrived and I commented to my friend Steph that it included kiwi fruits as we were just discussing the differences she learned about while living in New Zealand between the birds, the people, and the fruit. This segues into me saying that I can’t wait to get a food dehydrator. One of the lovely watershed ladies chimes in that you can make your own and boy, does that get me excited. I need to make one.

It is here that a blog – this blog – comes in. Kind of. At that point in the night we hadn’t discussed it, but let’s pretend we’re friends with “in retrospect” and it will all be alright.

For a while, I’ve been wanting to start a blog. Not necessarily for people to read, but if they do, hey, that’s cool. I just didn’t know what to write about – being an artist, talking about art, foodie-ism, environmentalism…? I told them my dilemma and they said, well, why not everything? They thought I'd make a great food writer, with my strange student foodie ways.

So. I want to write about my life as a foodie/environmentalist art student. Reader beware, you’ll never know what’s coming! There’s a lot of great material here.

This food dehydrator is mission one.

I did a little research online and didn’t find any plans that really met what I wanted, but I got some info and, well, I felt confident enough to design my own solar powered food dehydrator. Why the heck not? All it really needs is a good ventilation system, to be weather safe (if it’s solar powered, it needs to be outside), and it needs to have removable trays for easy access and cleaning.

I do a quick doodle or two of what mine is supposed to look like:

Then I do a dimensional doodle of a superior quality and coherence. Complete with dimensions and everything!

What’s really cool about this particular food dehydrator is that it’s a solar powered one. No electricity here, baby. AND, all it will take to make is

· some ¼ inch plywood (approximately 3 square feet if my math skills don’t fail me),

· a 12 inch X 12 inch X 1/4 inch piece of plexiglass,

· a handle for the plexiglass,

· some screws and nails,

· six 11 ½ inch X I don’t know, something like ½ inch woodstrips,

· four to eight ¼ inch X ¼ inches cubes,

· aluminum flashing,

· and some screen!

Tool wise, I’d need something to cut the wood and strips, a drill, a hammer, and one of those funny little things you attach to a drill to cut out a one inch hole in a piece of wood, perhaps some scissors for the screen, a pencil (can’t forget the pencil!) and a ruler/tape measure.

How about some construction skills? Don’t get me wrong. I don’t really build things. I have no idea how this is going to go, let alone how well the thing is going to really function at the end.

However, up until the skills part, I have or can find all of these materials. I have some scrap wood from a sculpture project, aluminum flashing I inherited from my uncle, screws and nails aplenty at my Dads house, and even a little band saw. Find some plexiglass, and I’m good to go!

Phase one of mission one: plans: complete. Thanksgiving is next week and I get a nice break to go home so phase two of mission one: collection will commence then I suppose.