The Beginning of a Root Cellar

Reader Contribution by Bethann Weick
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It was a Saturday in mid-July when we started on our root cellar. A few days prior I had gone out with loppers in hand and cut back the brambles and cherry sprouts that were hiding the old cellar hole. Having caved in on all but the east side, and having spent decades filling in with rocks, tree limbs, humus, and leaves, it was more of a chaotic depression in the ground than a cellar hole.  

But a cellar hole is what we hoped to make of it.  With shovels, rock bars, and a pick axe, Ryan and I, joined by our friend Chris (who deserves all manner of accolades for his role in this), faced the site. With a bountiful garden expanding every year, we needed a reliable way to store  winter crops — potatoes, carrots, turnips, beets, and cabbage. Onions, garlic, and squash could safely be stored indoors, but the others needed a cool, damp place to last until the spring. A root cellar was essential, and with no means to bring machinery to the property, our only option was to dig it by hand. We hoped that choosing the old cellar site would give us an advantage for easy digging, but we knew better than to be too optimistic.

Thus, for the better part of one very hot day, we shoveled dirt, axed roots, pried, dug, and rolled rocks, and extricated old bricks and the usual assortment of pottery and metal objects.  We made great headway, but it was also clear how much more we had to do.  The mess of boulders from the collapsed north wall had yet to be dug and removed, and a number of large rocks on the “floor” would require a borrowed griphoist to get out.  Not to mention that the hole would have to be squared out to approximately 11’ x 7’ (cellar will be roughly 10’ x 6’) and dug down another foot or so.

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