Conclusion
Conclusion
This has been quite a journey, and you probably began with a little apprehension. After all, keeping a root cellar is a throw back to the old days and, on the surface, seems too complicated to tackle. But now that you have lived with a root cellar, you know this age-old technology is appropriate for modern times. When combined with today’s high-tech monitoring solutions and gardening techniques, root cellaring is a fabulous way to keep your family fed with nutritious, healthy foods. Root cellaring is an extremely reliable method of food storage with consistent year-round results. It gives you complete control from seed packet to dinner table.
Keeping a root cellar moves your family away from the mass-produced supermarket system. Many folks would wonder why they should bother when they can buy produce at the grocery store during the winter. But you know the truth: grocery store veggies taste nothing like the treasures you have stored in your root cellar. In fact, grocery store veggies do not taste like anything. With your own root cellar, you no longer need to spend time shopping for this high-priced, additive-laced supermarket produce and pay the fuel costs to transport it and cool it. The average size root cellar will nearly pay for itself within one year of use. Meal planning becomes easier because you have all the ingredients at your disposal and ready to use. You also save the incidental costs of those impulse purchases that happen with every trip to the grocery store. Just imagine no more fights in the cookie aisle.
Next to the financial savings are the even more important health benefits of eating produce from your garden. By raising the produce yourself, you can eat organic fruits and vegetables and eliminate additives, preservatives, and chemicals from your dinner plate. Your root cellar keeps the produce at its most nutritious state until you can eat it, which improves the taste. The root cellar has also taught your children potatoes do not naturally come from a plastic bag, apples are not picked in July, and vegetables can actually taste good. Every year you grow produce and use a root cellar, your children learn valuable lessons in self-sufficiency and acquire important skills they will carry into adulthood. As a family, you have significantly reduced your contribution to the enormous carbon footprint fuel-hungry factory farms, long-distance transportation, and constantly running grocery store coolers create.
The result of building your root cellar has been a delicious boon to your table. But it has also benefitted your well-being. Through all the new skills you acquired and the physical labor you put into completing the project, your body has grown stronger, your mind has grown sharper, your independence has increased, and your success has lifted your spirits. When those shelves are loaded down with bins of produce, you will forget the hard days of weeding, hammering, and shoveling.
Root cellaring is a rewarding experience, and it is easy to see why root cellaring has made a resurgence across the United States and Canada. With all the pressures on our food system, raising and storing your own produce has a place in modern society. This time-honored art is once again proving to be the perfect way to save money, feed our families, and live more in tune with nature. Now that you have your own root cellar, you can bask in pride of ownership, devise ways to spend that extra money you have saved, and, yes, brag to your friends and neighbors. Each day when you step into your treasure-trove, take pride in knowing you are moving your family closer to living off the grid and bringing the most nutritious offerings to your dinner table.