Living The Good Life With Helen And Scott Nearing

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We finally decided upon root-cellar storage. In the course of our building, we made three cellars. The first one was under the kitchen of the main house. We dug it as we built the house and designed it to hold maple syrup, preserves, juices, and the fruits and vegetables in current use. It was never cold enough for permanent storage because it was separated from the kitchen by nothing more than a double wooden floor.

Our permanent vegetable storage unit was the cellar under the workshop, which later became the guesthouse. Fires were lighted in the room above this cellar only occasionally. The temperature there went to 20° Fahrenheit or lower during the frostiest nights of winter. The cellar had a spring which flowed from under a ledge. This running water helped to keep the temperature equable and the air moist. The floor we made of coarse gravel, allowing free flow of water and yet complete drainage.

We equipped this cellar with shelves and storage bins, a foot deep and about three feet wide. Into these storage bins we dumped quantities of maple leaves, gathered when they first fell in the autumn before they became dry and dirty. Root vegetables and fruit were packed away in these leaves ... first a generous layer of leaves, then a layer of vegetables. then more leaves and more vegetables until the bins were filled. On the top layer we put several inches of leaves.

The plan worked well. Whenever we wanted potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, celery root. or apples, we brushed away the top leaves and picked out the firm, crisp garden products. The leaves held off frost and at the same time kept the air from evaporating the juices from the vegetables and fruit. Almost every year we ate carrots, beets, onions, turnips, rutabagas, potatoes, and apples from this cellar up to the July following the autumn in which they were stored. Many of these garden products lasted over into August.

Having found that our root cellar was too damp for cabbage, we built another type of storage cellar on higher land and with an earth floor, under the toolshed and back of the greenhouse. We strung a scaffolding of boards around the inside of this concrete cellar,, drove in nails at intervals of a foot, pulled our cabbage up by the roots, and hung them with strings, upside down, around the cellar walls, no two cabbages touching. With that arrangement we managed to keep cabbage until the following May.

We also used this cellar for storing celery, celery root, and parsley root ... pulling them on a wet September or October day before heavy frost, when plenty of earth would cling to the roots, placing four or five heads in an old sap bucket with a leaky bottom (for air circulation), and packing the buckets side by side on the earth floor of the cellar.

Under fair conditions the celery would last for two months. If we took it from the garden just before the first heavy frost, we had our own celery on the table at Christmas and New Year's. Curly endive, escarole, and Chinese cabbage, similarly treated, kept fresh and good up to eight weeks. Witloof chicory roots we put in old sap buckets, covered them with earth, and had chicory greens growing through the winter. With a little care, chives and parsley plants were kept growing until spring. Winter squash also kept in this cellar, though a dry, not too cool/not too warm attic is superior for the purpose.

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