Putting Food By - Janet Greene [187]
22
Root-Cellaring
Of all the time-tested ways of putting food by, only wintering-over in cold storage at home is less satisfactory today than it was a century or more ago. The reason is simple. All the technological advances we’re so pleased with in construction and heating have given us cozy, dry basements instead of cool, damp cellars, and the chilly shed off the pantry has given way to a warm passageway between carport and kitchen.
Therefore, this section is telling how to re-create conditions that several generations of North Americans have devoted themselves to improving. It includes some indoor areas that are warmer and drier than the traditional outbuilding or cellar with stone walls and a packed earthen floor, and it also includes some arrangements outdoors that are a good deal more rough-and-ready.
To root-cellar is to store for the winter a variety of fresh, whole, raw vegetables and fruits that have not been processed in any way to increase their keeping qualities. This means that such foods must be held for use during the winter—and some even longer, into the next growing season—without being subjected to an unnatural amount of heat or of cold or of dryness.
HOW IT WORKS
Used commonly, root-cellaring means to hold these foods for several months after their normal harvest in a cold, rather moist atmosphere that will not allow them to freeze or to complete their natural cycle to decomposition.
The freezing points and warmth tolerances of produce vary. The range to shoot for generally, though, is 32–40 F/Zero–4 C—the effective span for refrigeration—with only a couple of vegetables needing warmer storage to keep their texture over the months. In this range the growth of spoilage micro-organisms and the rate of enzymatic action (which causes overripening and eventual rotting) are slowed down a great deal.
Good home root-cellaring involves some control of the amount of air the produce is exposed to, since winter air is often let in to keep the temperature down. But fresh whole fruits and vegetables respire after they’re harvested (some more than others: apples seem almost to pant in storage), so the breathing of many types is reduced by layering them with clean dry leaves, sand, moss, earth, etc., or even by wrapping each individually in paper. These measures of course aren’t as effective as those of commercial refrigerated storage, which rely in part on drastic reduction of the oxygen in the air supply, but they work well enough for the more limited results expected from home methods. We’ll be describing a variety of storage arrangements in a minute.
The beauty of root-cellaring is that it deals only with whole vegetables and fruits and there are no hidden dangers: if it doesn’t work, we know by looking and touching and smelling that the stuff has spoiled, and we don’t eat it. On the other hand, it’s something that sounds a lot more feasible than it may really turn out to be.
First, the householder must learn something about the idiosyncrasies of the fruits and vegetables he plans to store on a fairly large scale: for example, apples and potatoes—the most popular things to carry over through winter—can’t be stored near each other, and the odor of turnips and cabbages in the basement can penetrate up into the living quarters, and squashes want to be warmer than carrots do.
Then he casts around for the right sort of storage. And the solution may cost more than its value to his overall food program, especially if it’s a structure more elaborate or permanent than the family’s make-up warrants. But aren’t there the less pretentious outdoor pits, or the more casual barrels sunk in the face of a bank? Yes; and they’re fun to use—except in deep-snow country when they can be a worry to get at.
The late Samuel Ogden of Landgrove, Vermont, organic gardener and noted Green Mountain countryman, warned the newcomer to cold-climate root-cellaring to avoid three things: (1) counting too heavily on cold storage; (2) having too much diversity; and (3)