Frontier Fridays: A Desirable Root Cellar

Cellars were used to store many foods as this excerpt from a household diary tells. Here is what a desirable cellar contains:

• A safe or movable storage closet is needed with sides of wire or perforated tin in which meats, cream, and other articles can be kept. If ants be troublesome, we put the legs in tin cups of water.



• A refrigerated box, or large wooden box on feet and with a lining of tin or zinc and a space between the tin and wood filled with powdered charcoal, will have a place on the bottom to hold ice and a drain to draw off melting water, movable shelves and partitions is used for storing cool items. Clean ice box once a week.



• Filtering jars, to purify water should also be kept in the cellar.



• Fish and cabbage in a cellar are apt to scent the house and give a bad taste to other foods, so should be avoided.