In our agrarian past, we didn’t have  a grocery store in every town receiving shipments of fresh fruits and vegetables from all corners of the world on a daily basis.  Food preservation was a necessity to survive the long winter in most locations.  Over the centuries, many have gotten their winter produce fix from a simple non-tech solution:  the root cellar.

 

Last year when I did my One-Month Stockpile Challenge, I realized that this was a glaring omission in my food stockpile process, so this year, I’m determined to add this strategy to take my stockpile to the next level.  Fall is the perfect time to begin because for the next few months, those hard-shelled root vegetables as well as items like apples and potatoes, will be abundant and cheap.

 

The first root cellars in recorded history were in Australia – 40,000 years ago it is indicated that they were burying their yam harvests in order to keep them fresh.  Since then, underground food storage caches have been found all over the world, as people took advantage of the cool moist atmosphere a few feet down.