DIY Basement Root Cellar

Reader Contribution by Bethann Weick
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Adobe Stock/andov
Woman puts jars with vegetables and fruits in the basement with food, for storage for a long time.

Living without refrigeration, this resourceful homesteader creates a DIY basement root cellar.

Our cabin has neither cellar nor long-term food storage.  During the warmer months, we eat from the garden and supplement our family’s diet with dry goods. Perishables are a treat — and eaten quickly. A cooler dug into the ground is our closest approximation of a refrigerator.

After a prolific season in the garden, food storage is our major challenge. In some years, when the harvest was small, we stored produce in baskets and boxes in a yurt, and ate everything before the freezing cold (or decomposition from time) could lead to our food’s demise. This season we’re lucky: My parents have moved here to Dorchester, New Hampshire, where we homestead, we quite conveniently own a full unfinished basement with space extra for us to fill.  We can now lay potatoes on and under cardboard, and bury root vegetables, such as turnips, carrots and beets, in buckets of sand. We stuff cabbage heads into containers of compost.

Creating Our DIY Basement Root Cellar

Even still, during the heat of summer, the cellar is a tad too warm for storage. I could tell from cabbage leaves losing their life too quickly and turnips and carrots trying to sprout.

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