I’m trying to moderate a surge of excitement that I am feeling as garden season approaches full-swing. My mother isn’t helping any. Yesterday she gave me a book on root cellars that has been like a dose of high sugar coffee to a squirrel. Fortunately, I have just rearranged my whole basement to accommodate food storage in the coolest room of the house (don’t tell my older daughters who used to have to sleep there… ), so I have a head start on the theme. That major reorganization is also a result of talking with my mother, as well as a long standing problem with my only adequate space for food storage being in the furnace room. No matter now. The games, craft supplies, detergents, etc., are now in that cozy room.
The totally unheated pantry is a smaller version of the storeroom in Blast From the Past, only I think I will enjoy “shopping” in my pantry more than the bomb shelter wife of that fun flick. My stock should be fresh every year and grown mostly in my own back yard. That’s the plan anyway. I have to learn how to work with the temperature in that room, which is really not quite cold enough. However, there is a window that may help me keep it colder in the winter if I can figure out how to insulate the doorway and not turn the whole downstairs living area into a freezer. I know that reality may hold some lessons for me as I learn this new skill, but, for now, the thrill of anticipation is energizing me.
I checked on many of my seedlings yesterday, those in the garden and those in flats that spend the days on the patio and the nights in the greenhouse. They are all robust and cheerfully green. Well, the ones that have survived the cats digging in the raised beds or pill bugs gearing up for whatever pill bugs do. Then I received this new book and made it to chapter 8 already. I find that I need to adjust my ideas of a planting schedule some and I will try a few new types of vegetables to give variety to the winter fare. Things like endive and kale.
So off I skip to the Territorial Seed Company website to order a few more packets of seeds. I may also hit Johnny’s Selected Seeds again. The ancient art of using a root cellar is new to me, but I think it’s time to learn about it.
I KNEW that room was the coldest … *brrrr* Of course, what that means now, is that I have trouble sleeping at all if it’s above 70 degrees anywhere. Oh, well.
I am looking forward to gleaning the tidbits of information you are bound to let fall in this blog and elsewhere … storage may well be an issue for me in the near future!
I don’t care if it’s the coldest room, it’s still my favorite…
Well, that’s because that’s where the food is now, Miss Culinary Arts Major 😉
I think it’s one of the most happy rooms of the house, second of course to where my friends are : )
I also think of it in terms of having food on hand with which to serve friends when they come over for dinner!
You have, perhaps, THE most wonderful food store room in the universe!
*sighs in happiness*
I thought the book would be intriguing to you, but I see it has spurred you on as much as it has your Dad and myself. 🙂 I will have to make a trek over to view your new panty-cellar. From the pics, it looks wonderful. But please don’t get it to actual freezing there, or it may not be good for your jars of canned foods! 😀
No, I won’t bring it to freezing. There was a fair range of temps for the different produce and I will have to find a happy medium. I think I will also be able to use the greenhouse more effectively for some things that need more humidity. That waterfall in there will have some practical use, as well as being fun. And it looks like I can keep the winter squash somewhere in the main house, even under the bed!
Yes! Using other rooms, and especially your greenhouse w/that water fall is going to work fine. Finding places to store the veggies will be a fun adventure for us all.
We should install rafters, so we can hang things from them.
The image of our house in my mind is beginning to look like a curious little veggie abode…: The greenhouse’s walls and shelves lined with bunches of lettuce, a variety of edible substances hanging from every possible inch on the ceiling, climbing to our beds at night up the mountains of gourds “beneath” them… :]