This is going quite well! Mainly, the idea is to do the regular tending, and see how things hold up. Although I’m calling it root cellaring, it’s really quite a limited experiment this first time round. The veggies weren’t too carefully sorted for long-term storage to start with, and I’d pay more attention to getting everything into cool conditions quickly. And really, I’d make sure the space was proper root cellar material! Here, the temperature didn’t drop from 60°F until the last week or so, and it’s only at 50°F now and around 45% humidity. Not exactly ideal. Still, not bad so far. I’ve culled about half a dozen onions from a bushel, lots of the smallest squash (there’s LOTS left), a couple of apples. The pic shows about half of what’s there. If I were holed up in the wilderness and this was my food cache for the next four months, I’d be worried. But I’m not, and we’ll be eating storage veggies for a while… It’ll be interesting to see what’s up in another month. I wonder, how many ways are there to prepare winter squash?!
root cellar
Root cellar lite
Finally got around to starting to sort out the spot for the root cellaring experiment. It’s in the basement of the house, against the north wall. I thought the floor was dirt, but it turns out to be cracked and rubbly concrete. Oh, well. It’s still fairly warm, around 60°F (15°C), but should cool down soon. I’m not doing much, other than clearing enough room for 8 or 10 bushel baskets. Monitoring temperature and humidity through the winter—a handy little digital min/max thermometer/hygrometer is already on duty—and seeing how the veggies hold up week by week is the main thing for this round. Some squash and beets are just out of sight to the left. The bulk of the veggies go in soon…
Putting food by
With the farmers’ market over, time to turn to fall-and-winter things. This year, I’m for the first time organizing a proper veggie selection for storage (it’s about time I started…training for that future CSA root cellar!). Instead of the usual bushel baskets of this and that, casually left around the barn to take their chances with temperature and location, now, there’s a bit of plan. For a root cellar, the basement of the farmhouse, the side with a dirt floor that used to be filled with potatoes when this was a fully working, big family farm. For the veggies, today’s haul has a mix of potatoes, assorted winter squash and pumpkins, various carrots, onions, garlic, plus apples picked up at the market. It’s a first step, there’s still lots more in the field: beets, spinach, collards and kale, herbs, and more carrots to go… Harvesting isn’t history just yet!