Putting up food for the winter using a dehydrator

The cool, crisp fall weather has arrived and it is time to put the garden to bed. Lots of items to put up for the winter through canning, freezing and dehydrating. The latter is new to us, so this post will be dedicated to that process. We purchased a basic dehydrator – Nesco 700-watt – and sharpened the blade on our mandolin. Then we sliced up some beets and got them going. We sliced the beets different thicknesses to experiment and then set the dehydrator to 140 degrees for the first hour and then down to 115 for the next 18 hours or so. Here is the recipe we used. Drying time varies on thickness, moisture content, and probably a whole host of other factors. We just keep checking them to see how they are doing. We are trying some apples as well.