Putting Up Below Ground

A modern-day homesteader keeps garden crops fresh through winter using old-time techniques and a basement root cellar.

- Shaye Elliott

Preserve everything” is the homesteader’s mantra during the months of plenty. Traditionally, this was the only way people had food to eat during the winter. Even today, you’ll see farm women working over the stove, canning their precious peaches, dehydrating their crop of cherries in the sunshine or bundling up herbs to dry. But maybe the easiest way to put up for winter is to store the produce in a cold storage root cellar.

Even for a backyard gardener, this can be a great way to carry over a surplus of root vegetables with very little planning or prep work. Frankly, it’s much easier to throw a bin of apples in the cellar than it is to can all that fruit. That’s not lazy homesteading— it’s smart homesteading.