Movie star root cellar and farm tour
With
the worst of the winter's cold over (we hope), I figure I have enough
data to finish up my ebook about the fridge
root cellar.
For a very low-work and low-cost option, it passed with flying colors,
using about 2 kilowatt-hours of electricity to keep a whole
winter's-worth of carrots in prime shape. During a power outage
that corresponded to a frigid spell, the interior dropped to 28 degrees
Fahrenheit (and I brought our carrots inside for a few days to protect
them), but otherwise the fridge root cellar stayed at the perfect
temperature all winter long.
Even though I think our
fridge root cellar is awesome, I want to round out my ebook with
overviews of some more traditional root cellars, so I gave my
movie-star neighbor a call. You'll have to wait for the ebook to
hear all about his root cellar that taps into a cave, but I'll regale
you with the other highlights of my visit below. (Meanwhile, the
offer's still open
to be included in the ebook if you have a root cellar or low-tech root
storage technique to share.)
Our neighbor has been
grafting new varieties onto his apples for years, and it was intriguing
to see the grafts one to three years after joining. He even sent
me home with two little Colette pear trees grafted onto rootstock last
winter --- we tasted some of his homegrown Colettes last year and were
blown away by the flavor.
I also dropped by his
spring-fed pond to get a bit more inoculant for my tiny water
garden (as Sara suggested I call it instead of a puddle).
This pond's water will stay more cold and aerated than mine, so I'm not
positive the water snails and water cress will make the transition, but
I suspect the forget-me-nots and water mint will do fine.
Finally, we gathered a
few wild golf balls and I watched my neighbor enjoy pasture
golfing. Isn't that the best part of homesteading --- you can do
whatever crazy thing suits your fancy?
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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