From the kitchen, I go through this doorway and down two steps to get to the root cellar.
The magazines here are the good old "Organic Gardening and Farming"....back before things got yuppified.
This is the door in. Years ago I put an ad on our local radio station asking for unwanted, free building materials. We got this metal, insulated door for the hauling ;-)
When you first open the door, these are on each side, buried in the floor. These are flue tiles. Perishable food like milk or mayo can go down inside even in summer and be cold enough to stay fresh. For best results, we have insulated wooden covers on top, with hanging baskets attatched.
If you look carefully in the bottom of the right tile, you will see a casualty....a mouse that fell in. That's why it's a good idea to keep a lid on it!
To the left is a vent, covered in hardware cloth to prevent rodents from using it as a superhighway. The root cellar is approximately 8x8 feet, divided in half. Each side has a lower and higher vent pipe to the outside.
My strategy is to buy food on sale and get things free or very cheap with double coupons. I used to home can hundreds of jars a year. Now I freeze more.
I never go to the store to buy food for a particular meal. Instead I stock up on everything and "shop" from my storage.
Since our house is underground, it was easy to put in a root cellar accessible from the kitchen. The cellar is dug into the northern slope of a hill and is covered with a foot or so of dirt. It stays cool all year.
The root cellar walls and shelves are made from native, rough-cut cedar.
