When you live in the Northeast, we unfortunately don’t have a “local” farm to get our citrus from, but we do buy in season (winter), from an organic farm in California. We’ve been buying from Fairview Orchards for a few years now, and they never disappoint. This year, we splurged and purchased 20 pounds of Meyer lemons, with all expectations of preserving them to enjoy throughout the year, which is normal for us to do as suburban homesteaders.
I’ve only made my way through 10 pounds of the lemons so far and I dehydrated them all. We use an 8-year-old Excalibur 9-Tray dehydrator and I got 30 lemons on the 9 trays. Those 30 lemons quickly filled up three half gallon mason jars once dried. We will use most of those dried lemons for hot herbal tea and our black iced tea with lemon!
I even held onto the tops of the lemons that I sliced off to use throughout the week in our water and any dishes we prepped that needed fresh lemon juice. As a #zerowastekitchen, we try to use it all up, before bringing it out to compost bins.