How to Build a Root Cellar for Food Storage
For food storage, a root cellar acts as a refrigerator in the spring and summer. Root cellars are an inexpensive way of preserving food.
July/August 1980
By Greg Roberts
Learning how to build a root cellar will help your family preserve food and store food during the winter season. Not long ago, just about every family in the world's colder climes had one of these harvest keepers for food storage - a root cellar. Nestled in the earth-and away from the heat of the kitchen, a root cellar maintained a tempera ture just above freezing and provided practical food storage for root crops, apples, meats and cabbages . . . throughout a long winter.
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Of course, the heyday of the homestead food storey ended a good while ago. When folks gained access to refrigerators and supermarkets, the root cellar was pretty much forgotten. In fact, by the time I was a lad, all the root cellars in our area had long since been abandoned. The deteriorating fod storage structures were used only by us youngsters . . . as "secret" forts.
Nowadays, though, there's been a revival of interest in practical, inexpensive ways of preserving food. More and more people are rediscovering the wisdom of constructing a place to store unprocessed, homegrown edibles. And, even though building a cellar requires a fair investment in labor and materials, the finished shelter uses absolutely no operating energy and .id demands no maintenance or upkeep.
The root cellar shown in the accompanying photos was recently built by m, father, Ted Roberts, in Three Lakes, Wis cousin. Dad started the project by excavating an 8' X 8' X 20' cavern using a backhoe.
The bottom of the cellar was lined with sand for drainage purposes. When building the walls, though, Father laid a concrete base that had an upwardly protruding inner lip. The L-shaped foundation would both support the weight of the cedar log walls and brace the base of those rounds against the tons of sideways "cavein" pressure the earth-banked structure would be exposed to.
Every cedar log was peeled, and then cut square (on each of two opposing sides) in order to make sure that the vertically stacked timbers would all fit snugly in place. The ceiling cedars were notched where they rested atop the wall logs so that-like the concrete base lip-the horizontal beams could help brace the cellar's sides.
Father outfitted the front of the root cellar with double doors, which were separated by an air space to keep out the cold.(He used an acetylene torch to cut the rustic-looking hinges and hasp shown in the photos.) The storage house is also wired for electricity. When especially cold nights bring temperatures as low as 40° below zero, the cellar's incandescent light warms up the inside temperature a few degrees . . . to make absolutely sure that the put-back food doesn't freeze.
With the assistance of Dad's "emergency" heater, the finished cave stays a few degrees above the ice-up point throughout the entire Wisconsin winter. And it holds its even coolness during warm March thaws-when mourning cloak butterflies migrate over gray snow-and through surprising and stark May blizzards. Around midsummer the earth-sheltered space warms up to about 55° ... but winter-stored crops are gone by then, and there are fresh vegetables in the garden.
