Root Cellars also known as Storm Cellars

Not many people today know what a root cellar is. Sometimes they are called storm cellars. When my siblings and I visited our "growing up" home over Thanksgiving, I took several photos of the old root cellar that was on the farm when we moved there in 1951. I have no idea when it was built. But it still stands and with a bit of help it could be returned to its former useful condition. However, the farmstead now stands vacant and that is not likely to happen.

Even though my photos are poor I think you can get an idea of the construction of the walls and arched ceiling. The lower third of the vertical wall was cement. There is more cement on the higher/outer sides that acts as a retaining wall for the dirt covering the cellar. The thick dirt acted as insulation from summer heat and winter cold. One year we planted moss rose over the cave and it self-seeded every year thereafter. This made for a rather prolonged job of weeding which always seemed to be assigned to me.

Two wood doors, one at the top of the stairs and one at the bottom, provided access to the cellar. A wood bin once stood in one corner for the year's supply of potatoes for a family of eight. Along the walls were wood shelves (now gone) that held the year's canned goods. A simple stack pipe in the roof that allowed for ventilation in the summer was stuffed with a rag and covered with an upside-down bucket in the winter. Without the seal of the rag and bucket, freezing cold air would drop into the cellar causing freezing temps.

Since cold "drops" it was important also to seal the two doors in the winter with an old piece of carpeting laid over the outer door. A thermometer hung on the wall and we would check the air temp during trips to retrieve food. If the winter was brutally cold, Dad would light a kerosene lantern and set it on the floor to take the nip of frost out of the air. Freezing temps would ruin our winter's supply of potatoes and cause them to turn to stinking mush.

In late spring we cleaned out the remaining potatoes which had begun to spoil and which had grown long sprouts as they searched for sun. The shelves would be cleaned and fresh newspaper laid down for shelf paper for the coming year's crop. Empty fruit jars that had been returned to the cellar would be lined up in one area and any remaining canned fruit would be rearranged at one end, awaiting the newly canned jars of garden produce.

The cellar served a second purpose as a storm cellar. During raging wind storms in the spring and summer when we thought we detected tornado clouds on the horizon, our family would scurry for the cellar carrying a flashlight or kerosene lantern. I can distinctly remember huddling in the near-dark, hearing the wind roar and the thunder boom. When the noise subsided of what we were certain must be near-destruction overhead, Dad or a brother would bravely open the first door and peak out the top door to ascertain whether or not it was safe to once again step above ground.

This was an unusually well-constructed root cellar. The builder, whoever he was, was a fine craftsman indeed.