After 2 days of feeling downright miserable, I am happy to be up and at 'em again. Being sick and I, don't do well. Nothing hurts me more than not being able to get things done. Some people relish in an unplanned day off. Me, not so much. I always seem to have more to do, than I have hours in the day! But I did take the necessary time to recoup, regroup and recover. Still not feeling 100%, but definitely much better now.
And, since I wasn't feeling very well yesterday, I spent some time on one of my favorite Facebook pages, Alberta Gardening: https://www.facebook.com/groups/472577249593637/?ref=nf_target&fref=nf . I shared the first two pictures of the cabbage and carrots to then receive so many questions as to how we manage to keep them so well, and into January?
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| Cabbage and carrots from our garden harvested in fall of 2018. |
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| I am so impressed at how well our veggies keep in the Pit. |
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| A stew made from our beef, veggies and herbs ~ ready for the oven. |
Several years ago, Papa and I built a storage pit in our unheated machine shed. It is 8' deep and 3' across, cribbed with 2x4's, 2x6's, and 2x8's ~ whatever scrap he had kicking around. He dug the hole, I passed down the wood, he filled a bucket with sand, I hauled it up and dumped it. It took a few days to get it all done, but a mighty fine hole we had. I still chuckle when I remember him asking for a ladder to get out, when he finally got it as deep as he wanted. That's quite a fine predicament you have gotten yourself into, isn't it, says I? Ha, ha, ha! Apparently, he didn't think it was quite as humorous as I did! No sense of humor at all! Hee hee hee!
After I let him out, he then proceeded to insulate the walls with left over Styrofoam pieces and built a lid from 3/4" plywood and 2x4's. He built a second "lid", a plug, if you will, with 8" of Styrofoam to fit under the lid as an extra insulating precaution. We do get to -40 degrees Celsius here.
The first year, it worked too well and we ended up with way too much humidity in the pit. He then drilled a couple of holes and installed some pvc pipe to vent it. That worked perfectly! Now the humidity runs about 85%, which is perfect for potatoes, carrots, beets, rutabagas and cabbage. The screened vents are either open or covered, depending upon the outside temperature. There is no source of heat required, as it is below the frost line. We can keep these veggies until April/May and they still are fresh and crisp.
So, how did this plan come about? When we built the house, we had in our plan, a Cold Cellar in the basement. There is no in-floor heating in this room and with the outside vents, we thought we would have the perfect cold storage room.
Apparently, our plumber didn't completely understand the whole Cold Storage concept, when he ran the heating pipes from the boiler through this room, out to the in-floor heating in the attached garage. Sigh. So Papa insulted and sheeted in the roof of the cold storage room, to contain the heat from the pipes traversing through. It was simply not enough.
Although the room is still quite a bit cooler than room temperature, it will never be cold enough to be used as intended. It is cool enough for preserves, wine and other veggies like pumpkin, squash, onions, garlic, but it is simply too warm for anything else. Time for a Plan B.
Necessity became the mother in invention. I figured if they can store root vegetables in Alaska, Iceland, Siberia, Finland, we should have no issues doing it here. Some serious research and a bit of ingenuity, a bit of trial and error and we have a solution to our problem: An in-ground, below the frost line, Cold Storage Pit. Ta da!
In hindsight, it was a mixed blessing that the plumber didn't comprehend the whole Cold Room Concept. We now have a nice warm floor above this cool, storage room, with adequate coldness for everything kept in it.
We also realize that we would have required a different storage system/room eventually anyways, since we wouldn't have been able to store everything we need to keep. All's well that ends well!
Warmest regards,
Gremlynn
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