Produce Bound Underground(2)

 

Legalities There is much ambiguity about root cellars when it comes to building permits. Though not usually listed among typical projects, they are nonetheless usually required to have building permits. However, in some rural areas they are considered “agricultural sheds,” and therefore not subject to building-permit requirements. Any addition of utilities, such as electricity or water, is likely to change any building-department nonchalance and cause the local agency to insist upon permits and inspections.  Renovating an already existing root cellar can usually be accomplished without a building permit, provided no extreme expansion is planned. Hiring a contractor to build a root cellar will certainly necessitate building permits and periodic inspections of the work. Digging a root cellar into the exposed soil in a basement may allow for an unobserved and therefore un-permitted construction, but such illegal additions to a house can become problematic when it undergoes inspections prior to being sold. For you and your family’s safety, always consult knowledgeable professionals for sound building advice.

So, what is a dedicated food saver to do? Luckily, there are ways around this problem. A good root cellar has a variety of shelves, some higher than others, and some closer to the air vents. Placing the ethylene producers up high and nearer the exit vents has a tendency to move harmful gases away from produce stored on the floor below. Many root crops are also regularly stored in boxes of loose soil or sawdust, further insulating them from their neighbors’ emissions. Some produce, like cabbages and onions, often emit odors that can taint the flavors of other vegetables, as well as fruits, so finding high, remote corners for these pungent items is a good idea too.

In addition to raw produce, root cellars are excellent locations for a number of other foodstuffs as well. The previously mentioned beverages, like wine, cider, and beer, all enjoy the cool, dark environment of a root cellar. Cured meats like ham, bacon and other smoked meats store very well in temperatures below 40 degrees F. Milk, cream, butter and cheese all appreciate the environment of root cellars. Grains and nuts store very well in root cellars, but require extra precautions against insects, and must be sealed tightly to be secure. Dried and canned foods also keep well, provided they are kept either in less humid cellars, or in separate, drier compartments.

Fresh vegetables and fruits last different lengths of time when stored in a root cellar, but potatoes probably last the longest among vegetables; apples among fruit. Other good keepers include cabbage, beets, kohlrabi, onions, sweet potatoes, winter squashes, pumpkins and turnips. Beans, nuts and dried peppers are very long keepers.

Humidity
After temperature, humidity is the next most important feature of a typical root cellar. It is a good idea to equip your root cellar with a humidity gauge called a hygrometer. Most fresh fruits and vegetables require high humidity to avoid shriveling. A typical underground root cellar will naturally maintain a high humidity if it has an earthen floor, but depending on your particular environment and intended cellar use, you may wish to adjust the humidity level up or down by your management practices. Coolness is generally a desirable characteristic regardless of what you’re storing, but if you are storing a lot of canned goods, nuts or dried fruit, humidity can be your enemy because dried fruit can easily rot and metal canning lids can rust in humid environments. Once you make a list of the products you would like to store, the value of a root cellar with one humid chamber and another dry chamber might become more evident.

Humidity can be increased with an exposed dirt floor, sprinkling water on gravel floors and packing vegetables in wet sawdust. Humidity can be lowered by using concrete floors, barrels of rock salt or by allowing for more ventilation entering from drier air outside. 
One problem with high-humidity environments is that sometimes the air will condense as it cools, and that condensation can be a problem if it drips off the ceiling structures onto produce stored below. Avoid placing storage barrels below potential drips. Pre-treating the ceiling with disinfectants like chlorine can also slow the potential spread of dripping diseases.

Hot and Cold Places
Root cellars serve different purposes depending on their locations, and cellars in regions with excessively hot or cold temperatures are modified to suit their purpose. If winters are mild, as in Arizona or Florida, low temperatures can be difficult to obtain, no matter how deeply a root cellar is buried. But even in these warm areas, root cellars can help keep produce as cool as possible, and some builders are particularly inventive in designing methods whereby water dripping across burlap sacks cools the air near the root cellar’s intake vents. Other warm-weather residents content themselves, like the Egyptians, with storing nuts, grains and dried foodstufs in warmer, low-humidity cellars. Arizona is a particularly good environment for producing sun-dried fruits, and those products will keep for many months without preservatives if kept dry and a bit cooler than the normal environment.

In very cold areas, the purpose of a root cellar is generally to prevent the stored food from freezing. Toward this end, such cellars are usually constructed to be extra heavily insulated, and with vents that allow some sun-warmed air to be conducted inside. Large barrels of water inside the cellars can act as thermal buffers; some builders even go so far as to build covered manure pits because the slow decomposition gives off a bit of heat. Other people use the more modern solution of hanging a light bulb from the ceiling, taking care to shield any potatoes, onions or other root crops from the light.

Smoke summer-caught Fish One novel but excellent idea is to keep dried and smoked fish in a section of your root cellar. This technique is a great alternative to keeping those old trout from your camping trip in your freezer. Smoke the fish over your campfire—just put the cleaned fish on a rack where the campfire smoke wafts by for a few hours—and then store them later in your root cellar. Far tastier than thawed fish, smoked souvenirs of your vacation are a novel mid-winter treat.

Air Circulation
One of the key control features of a root cellar is the set of air vents that allow air to enter and exit the cellar. These vents not only allow a greater amount of temperature adjustment than available to a static space, but the air circulation can also be a valuable tool to deal with the ethylene gases and odors produced by a mixed assortment of fruits and vegetables.

The minimum arrangement is one inlet vent and one outlet vent, although there are a variety of situations in which multiple vents would be appropriate. In general, inlet vents should be placed low, and exit vents placed high. This is conducive to a nice, passive air flow through the root cellar. 

The outsides of the vents should all be sealed where they enter the structure with packed cloth, expanding foam or tight rubber gaskets. The vents themselves should be equipped with closing and opening valves, and it is convenient to make these valves operable from outside the root cellar. Closing vents in freezing weather and during summer heat spells will help keep the temperature inside the cellar more uniform. Vent pipes that can be twisted depending on the season to catch cooler or warmer winds are also a good idea. In the spring and the fall, cooling can be encouraged by opening the vents and possibly even the door at night when the temperature outside is dropping below the current temperature in the cellar.