Putting Food By - Janet Greene [189]
Pack the bags in an inexpensive polystyrene picnic cooler and store the chest in any cold spot, like an unheated roughly walled-off corner of the cellar or an enclosed sunless porch. Keep the lid tightly on the chest.
Late Apples in Small Metal Barrels
To use small metal trash barrels, you’ll need to provide some insulation so they will equal the efficiency of old-fashioned milk cans (which are becoming “collectibles” for nostalgia buffs and are very scarce). Put 3 inches of dry sawdust in the bottom of the barrel and pack 1 inch of sawdust between the outside apples and the metal sides. Electrician’s tape or other heavy-duty plastic self-adhesive strips may be wound tightly around the upper edge of the barrel, just below the rim, to ensure that the cover fits as smoothly tight as a milk can’s lid does.
SMALL-SCALE OUTDOOR STORAGE
There’s a good deal of information around that contains ideas for full-dress outdoor buildings for root-cellaring. Of these we suggest the USDA Home and Garden Bulletin No. 119, Storing Vegetables and Fruits in Basements, Cellars, Outbuildings, and Pits—available online. Your County Agent may be able to steer you to the more recent publications, and there are more resources online. As the practicality of homesteading has been developed, so has grown the amount of material published on virtually every phase of preserving crops.
Some Mild-Climate Pits, Etc.
The USDA bulletin and the other sources describe several easy-to-make and cheap outdoor storage facilities, all either on well-drained ground or sunk only several inches below the surface. See the chart on page 410 for which produce likes the conditions they provide.
However, such arrangements can be counted on only in places with fairly mild winters that have no great extremes in temperature. At any rate, make a number of small storage places, fill them with only one type of produce to each space, and be prepared to bring the entire contents of a store-place indoors for short storage once the space is opened.
Mild-Climate Cone “Pits”
Most instructions call a storage place like this a pit, but it’s really a conical mound above ground. To make it, lay down a bed of straw or leaves, etc.; pile the vegetables or fruits (don’t mix them together) on the bedding; cover the pile well with a layer of the bedding material. With a shovel, pat earth on the straw/leaf layer to hold it down, extending a “chimney” of the straw to what will be the top of the cone to help ventilate and control the humidity of the innards of the mound. Use a piece of board weighted by a stone to act as a cap for the ventilator. Surround the “pit” with a small ditch that drains away surface water.
As colder weather comes, add to the protective layer of earth, even finishing with a layer of coarse manure in January.
Mild-Climate Covered Barrel
Still called a “pit” is a barrel laid on its side on an insulating bed of straw, chopped cornstalks, leaves, etc. Put only one type of produce in the barrel on bedding of straw/leaves. Prop a cover over the mouth of the barrel; cover all with a layer of straw, etc., and earth on top to hold it down.
Outdoor Frame for Celery, Etc.
Dig a trench 1 foot deep and 2 feet wide, and long enough to hold all the celery you plan to store. Pull the celery, leaving soil on the roots, and promptly pack the clumps upright in ranks 3 to 5 plants wide. Water the roots as you range the plants in the trench. Leave the trench open until the tops dry out, then cover it with a slanted roof. This you make by setting on edge a 12-inch board along one side of the trench, to act as an upper support for the cross-piece of board, etc., that you lay athwart the trench. Cover this pitched roof with straw and earth.
A mild-climate cone “pit.”
(Drawing by Irving Perkins Associates)
Walter Needham’s Cold-Climate Pit
As he told in A Book of Country Things,