Living History: Drying Some Apricots

And, of course, one of the drawbacks of researching the dried fruit industry is that at some point, you've got to try it yourself.

Exhibit A: a flat of drying apricots. Our friends Michelle and Jim have an extremely productive Blenheim apricot tree in their backyard. They kindly let me snag ten pounds of apricots, which got laid out on a homemade drying tray made of plastic pipe and plastic screen wire that was laying around. 24 hours in, the apricots are drying ok, but some clouds and cooler temperatures this evening had me watching the sky much as Joe Machado would have been doing on his drying yard a hundred years back.