No, this is not a hobbit’s house. About 50 years ago this small excavation in the side of a hill was used as a root cellar.
Before the days of refrigeration, potatoes and other root crops like carrots, squashes, beets, and turnips could be stored in this underground bunker. The earth was shored up with wooden beams and possibly shelving could be put in, and then this place could function as a natural cooler for vegetables. A door kept larger animals out, and a pipe in the top provided an air vent so the vegetables (and the odd mouse) could breathe.
People of that era would probably have to make a trek to the root cellar before preparing the evening meal. Let’s hope they were braver than I am about encountering spiders.
We had one too. Remember as a youngster. Scary place!
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I would be scared to go in there as a kid too. I had (have) a real phobia of spiders.
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Looks exactly as ours. Scandinavia have a long tradition for these, and some are still using them. At least if they have cabins in the mountains where there is no electricity.
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I’m sure they are exactly what you need when you need to store vegetables in a cool but not frozen place and you have no electricity and can’t just run down to the store to buy things a few at a time.
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We had the goat grazing on the roof of ours, remember?
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Yes, I remember. You were quite the pioneers.
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So root as in root vegetables, not the x rated kind 🙂
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No, the real thing. Vegetables. Probably mainly potatoes.
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Mom has told me stories of her sister, Aunt Effie, sending her to the root cellar for supplies. They seemed to manage quite well without a refrigerator and an automatic ice machine. Pretty sure I would be totally lost without ours.
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People had to be more resourceful in those days. I admire them for managing without the conveniences we have today.
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I remember them well. We have certainly gotten spoiled, haven’t we!
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We sure have!
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Creepy! Enter with torch/flashlight at full tilt.
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And you have to pick up a basketful of potatoes. You really need three hands.
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The potatoes for my chips-wagon kept really good, winter, like summer. We also had light down there and it was dry. I also stored all the canned food and never lost one of them – it was just outstanding and I liked to go down there )especially when it was hot/cold outside. It was a good wine cellar as well! ¨LOL
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Excellent!
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Today I would be scared a crazy person was lurking inside! But there is something so “earthy” about this. As though the food is resting in the earth itself. I had a root cellar in Michigan, but it was a big cubbyhole on the side of my basement.
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I know what you mean, Luanne, but a person would have to be crazy to hide in that dark place.
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Those are the ones I’m afraid of!
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Wonderful photos! My grandfather Stanley Page built a wonderful root cellar on his farm
in Galiano in 1910.
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Didn’t you make some pictures of it, or etchings? Very nostalgic stuff.
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We had a cellar under the little porch of our farmhouse. I loved going down there – it was an adventure – but my mom hated it because of the mice. There were bins with potatoes and carrots and a few shelves with mom’s canned goods. She canned all the vegetables and even chicken. The best were the bottles of home made root beer. The root cellar in your picture could also have been an early home. My mom said that when she was a kid they lived in a “home” built into the earth and that clumps of sod often fell on their heads.
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I’ve heard that people who came out here to work and arrived too late in the year to build something often dug out a hollow in a hillside and that’s where they lived until spring. Can’t imagine the stamina it must have taken.
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Excellent photos, Anneli! I love the whole pioneering thing, and how people managed in those early days. I thought at first it was a shelter in case of a tornado or something equally disastrous.
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I suppose it could be a shelter for a tornado too.
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A time long gone. Nice photos!
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Yes, the olden days. Thanks.
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I assumed that country people with big gardens would use a root cellar even today. Enough potatoes and carrots for the winter would not fit in a refrigerator. I bet those homesteaders and back-to-the-earth, self-sufficient types. Whom I envy, by the way.
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I guess it depends on how big a family you plan to feed over the winter.
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Back home, I think people that still have access to a root cellar would still use them.
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I agree. They’re good for storing things like potatoes, especially.
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