cellar
Nowadays, we are rightly encouraged to make sure that our houses are insulated to conserve energy. New homes have high standards of thermal efficiency and in future, these standards will be higher still.
But, as we become more aware of our impact on our environment, we need to look more closely at what we want our homes to do. Do modern homes meet our environmental needs?
There has been a phenomenal interest in growing our own fruit and vegetables over the past few years. Not only does this provide us with healthy exercise, it provides us with high quality fresh food that has been grown on our doorstep. This is not a fad, but a change in lifestyle that will persist.
But home-produced food is awkward: it comes in gluts. It can’t be eaten at one sitting and so we need give thought to how we store surpluses. Our modern reaction is to freeze. So, our freezers become chock full of beans, broccoli, and blackberries. But freezing isn’t always the best option for storing. This year’s apple harvest was exceptional, but freezing all those apples is not practicable or appropriate. Carrots can be frozen, but storage in clamps or peat would work as well. To make the best of it, we must learn from our forebears.
This brings me back to my question about house design. Modern houses take little account of the need for food storage. In our first home, a 1930’s house, we had a cellar that had a constant temperature of 50 degrees F. It had a slab for cool meat storage and gave lots of opportunities for cool storage of fruit and vegetables. It was a fantastic conditioner of home brewed beer too!
Our modern home and garden doesn’t give us the same opportunities. Garages and sheds become too warm in summer and too cold in winter. Our small gardens don’t easily give us space for the root cellars that are common in
The answer is simple. Let’s return to designing homes that take account of our need to save food: our own superstore.
4 comments:
Cellaring is a great idea. A lot can be done with even a small pit cellar. It is also possible to create a supper insulated cool room for not too much money. There are simple attachments you can use on a room air conditioner that let you build a walk in cooler for not too much money. Mostly it takes a changed mind set.
I too long for a cellar, or even a basement where I could create a cellar. Unfortunately, my lot has way too high a water table so there's no chance of that happening. And I totally agree that the garage gets too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. As a result, I can and freeze what I am able to, and practice four season harvesting for as much fresh produce I can grow.
In America at least, older homes in the country have cellars. Urban homes almost never do. Shame.
I guess that another angle is to be more creative in the ways in which we preserve our surpluses.
Rob
What a great site, there is nothing like a January garden. We are hacking through the snow to get to some of our veggies this time of year, but I think cold, wet, sticky mud is even worse. If you really want to know whether the stupermarkets got it right just do a taste test, or better yet a chemical analysis.
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