Julie Fryer - The Complete Guide to Your New Root Cellar: How to Build an Underground Root Cellar and Use It for Natural Storage of Fruits and Vegetables

The Complete Guide to Your New Root Cellar

How to Build an Underground Root Cellar and Use it for Natural Storage of Fruits and Vegetables

By Julie Fryer

A few years back we lost our beloved pet dog Bear, who was not only our best and dearest friend but also the Vice President of Sunshine here at Atlantic Publishing. He did not receive a salary but worked tirelessly 24 hours a day to please his parents.

Bear was a rescue dog who turned around and showered myself, my wife, Sherri, his grandparents Jean, Bob, and Nancy, and every person and animal he met (well, maybe not rabbits) with friendship and love. He made a lot of people smile every day.

We wanted you to know a portion of the profits of this book will be donated in Bears memory to local animal shelters, parks, conservation organizations, and other individuals and nonprofit organizations in need of assistance.

Douglas and Sherri Brown

PS: We have since adopted two more rescue dogs: first Scout, and the following year, Ginger. They were both mixed golden retrievers who needed a home.

Want to help animals and the world? Here are a dozen easy suggestions you and your family can implement today:

• Adopt and rescue a pet from a local shelter.
• Support local and no-kill animal shelters.
• Plant a tree to honor someone you love.
• Be a developer put up some birdhouses.
• Buy live, potted Christmas trees and replant them.
• Make sure you spend time with your animals each day.
• Save natural resources by recycling and buying recycled products.
• Drink tap water, or filter your own water at home.
• Whenever possible, limit your use of or do not use pesticides.
• If you eat seafood, make sustainable choices.
• Support your local farmers market.
• Get outside. Visit a park, volunteer, walk your dog, or ride your bike.

Five years ago, Atlantic Publishing signed the Green Press Initiative. These guidelines promote environmentally friendly practices, such as using recycled stock and vegetable-based inks, avoiding waste, choosing energy-efficient resources, and promoting a no-pulping policy. We now use 100-percent recycled stock on all our books. The results: in one year, switching to post-consumer recycled stock saved 24 mature trees, 5,000 gallons of water, the equivalent of the total energy used for one home in a year, and the equivalent of the greenhouse gases from one car driven for a year.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my Mom, Annette Sasser, and my Grandma, Orietta Garland. These two amazing women taught me how to grow a garden, harvest the bounty, and turn it all into delicious meals and preserves for the winter. Thank you for these valuable lessons and for giving me the power each night to go down to the canning room and pick something for supper.

Introduction

How many times were we told to eat our vegetables while growing up? How many times have we said this to our own children and encountered resistance to eating that chunk of green produce? Vegetables and fruit are essential parts of every diet and provide vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, fiber, and calcium. Despite a host of healthy benefits, from cancer protection to a glowing complexion, few people consistently get their recommended daily allowance of produce each day.

For a variety of reasons, eating enough produce can be a challenge. Fresh fruits and vegetables usually require more preparation time than processed foods, and some do not taste good. Providing a family with a wide variety of wholesome produce can stress the grocery budget, especially when the children will not eat what is put on their plates.

Would you like a solution to this produce dilemma that will actually save you money and get your children to eat their veggies? The humble root cellar might be that answer. Although this might sound too much like living off the land and too complex for the average homeowner, root cellaring is a reliable storage method that has been used for centuries. Sometimes referred to as a cold cellar, an earth cellar, or cold storage, a root cellar is a structure built partially or completely underground that ranges in size from a multi-chambered room to a small can buried in the ground. The primary purpose of root cellaring is long-term, remote storage of produce at temperatures that will significantly slow the deterioration process without chemicals, preservatives, or additional preservation methods, such as canning. Easy to operate and practical to use, a root cellar still has a place in the modern home.

This approach to food storage is similar to the grocery stockpiling approach of those who use coupons or buy in bulk at warehouse stores. As a root cellar user, you are able to buy or grow in large quantities and store the food for future use. Perfect for the self-sufficient and adventurous family, this project has something for everyone. If you are a gardener, keeping a cellar will cut your workload during harvest time and give you more room to store a winters worth of produce. If you are not a gardener, using a root cellar will allow you to buy in bulk from local sources and cut your grocery budget by thousands per year. Root cellaring stretches your food budget, and best of all, you are stockpiling nutrition. After your first year of root cellaring, you will wonder how you ever lived without it.