Winter Cellar
The winter storage of homegrown food was a yearly concern for farm families, who had tended their gardens during the spring, all through the summer and into early autumn. Preserving the fruits of their labor for the coming winter months was an important part of the annual cycle of farm life in the early 1900s.
Planting and harvesting at the right times, along with proper storage, helped insure a regular food supply during the cold months when nothing could be grown. Different parts of the United States had various food storage practices, depending on the climate. For those regions that had severe winters, a well-stocked cellar was necessary for survival.
Without electricity or refrigeration on the farm, vegetables had to be home-canned, dried, or carefully stored fresh. The same was true for fruits harvested from the farm orchard. Meats were salt-cured, smoked, dried, canned or fried-down as means of preservation.
Whether vegetables were kept in a cellar below the farmhouse, in a cave dug into a hillside, or in a backyard root cellar below frost level, every effort was made to safely store the family’s winter provisions. House cellars often had stone walls and dirt floors. There were shelves for storing canned vegetables, large crocks for sauerkraut, bins for potatoes, wooden boxes for root crops, along with barrels for apples, carrots and parsnips.
There might be two entrances, one inside and outside, to a house cellar. No matter what type of storage area, it was important that the temperature remained cool, but above freezing and dry, with adequate air circulation. Various fruits and vegetables were best kept at slightly different cool temperatures. Too much warmth would cause the unwanted deterioration of both. Darkness in the storage area was also an important consideration. Light caused potatoes to turn green and become inedible.
A variety of vegetables were grown for immediate eating during the summer, as well as for canning in glass jars. Among these garden crops were tomatoes, cucumbers, beets, sweet corn, onions, new potatoes, beans, peas, cabbage, carrots and okra. The canning process was done over a hot kitchen stove in the heat of summer, because that was the time when fruits and vegetables ripened and were at their peak of flavor. Open doors and windows provided the only ventilation for this hot, time-consuming work in the farmhouse kitchen.
Jams and jellies were made from homegrown rhubarb, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, gooseberries, blueberries, currants, grapes, peaches, plums, apples, pears or crabapples. Cooking fruits with sugar and canning them in glass jars protected against spoiling.
Homemade pickled vegetables were also canned, using cucumbers, peppers, red and green tomatoes, onions, corn, beets, okra, cabbage, green beans, carrots and even cauliflower. Kitchen-produced condiments of horseradish, corn relish, chow-chow, chili sauce, Chicago Hot, piccalilli and sauerkraut gave spicy variety to winter eating.
Vinegar, salt, sugar and spices, purchased at the general store in town, were staples for preserving the garden’s bounty. Canned spiced peaches, watermelon pickles and candied apple rings added tasty flavors to special winter meals. Processing tomatoes into ketchup, soups and juice also utilized the crop. Green tomatoes, picked before the autumn frost, could be counted on to ripen in four to six weeks, if handled with care for storage.
Specific vegetables were grown because they could be successfully stored fresh in a cool cellar. These included potatoes, onions, squash, pumpkins, parsnips, carrots, turnips and rutabagas (believed to be a cross between wild cabbage and turnip). Allowing the outer skin of vegetables to air dry and cure before they were taken into the cellar was done with potatoes, onions, squash and pumpkins, to prevent them from rotting. Squash that were considered “good keepers” included Hubbard, butternut and acorn varieties.
Some winter hearty vegetables, such as parsnips, could be brought into the cellar and arranged in barrels of damp sand, or mulched with straw in the garden, where they were left for early winter storage, or even dug in spring, as the earth thawed.
Apple varieties ripened at different times in a typical farm orchard, from early autumn through late fall. These were used for making applesauce, apple butter or pie filling. Some of the apples might also be thinly sliced and carefully dried on screens under cheesecloth, or with the heat of the kitchen stove, for later eating or cooking. Dried beans and peas, for soups and stews, were also preserved this way.
Later fall apples were better suited for winter storage. Using undamaged apples was important to their successful storage in wooden boxes, barrels and crates. “One rotten apple can spoil the whole barrel,” proved to be a true folk saying.
Keeping apples near vegetable bins could shorten the long-term storage of potatoes and other produce. We now know that ethylene gas, a naturally produced ripening agent in fruits and vegetables, was the reason. Apples had an abundance of it, hastening the aging process and decreasing the quality, both in its own varieties and in other nearby fruits and vegetables.
Bringing preserved food up from a cellar was often the responsibility of children in a farm family. Whether the request was to bring up a pan of potatoes, a pint of grape jelly, or a quart of tomatoes, trips to the cellar were a regular part of everyday living. The cellar provided the family’s important nourishment throughout winter and was a daily reminder of the promise of springtime.
