Burying

[AlexanderCrane]

It sounds primitive, I suppose. Has anyone tried it?

 

[Half Baked]

What are you talking about? You mean like kimchi?

 

[AlexanderCrane]

Kimchi, what are you talking about? hehe

Like burying food in the ground for preservation through the winter?

 

[Half Baked]

Being a funeral director, you creeped me out for a second. The word 'burying' affects me immediately, and I'm not thinking food.

 

[AlexanderCrane]

Alex Grey worked in a morg, he's my favorite artist. AlexGrey.com I think you in particular will love this guy.

My family is from the south, and my parents grew up gardening and eating fresh foods. I am trying to revive that.

Burying to me seems a natural and energy efficient way to store food. I'm surprised people don't have this technique applied more often.

 

[bethzaring]

We tried it one year, had the fatest mice in the neighborhood, never tried it again. We do leave carrots in the ground right where they grow and cover them for winter, that has worked very well. We do it in various places in the garden, that way the mice do not find them all. But root cellaring is a much more reliable way to over winter veggies in my opinion.

 

[Alix]

Beth, how do you manage that with your carrots? Do you not get much snow? Does the ground not freeze where you are? I'd love to try that, but it gets pretty cold here and I think the ground would be frozen thus destroying the carrots.

 

[bethzaring]

The ground does freeze here every winter, so we put large flakes of hay on top and around the carrots. We plant a double row of carrots, far enough apart so we can hoe in the middle, and use quite a bit of hay to cover them. We raise our own hay so this in no problem for us. This year I tried using old sleeping bags to cover parsley and spinach and they also kept the ground from freezing. Would think newspapers, rugs, anything would work. It keeps the carrots very well, no rotting or anything. If the carrots would freeze, they would be ruined.

 

[Alix]

Hmmmm. I will have to think about that. I had about 30lbs of carrots in my fridge at one point. They actually kept pretty well, but fresher would be better. Thanks beth.

 

[BreezyCooking]

The closest I came to burying food was during my misspent youth. I was housesitting during the winter holidays for a friend & the fridge/freezer went out.

The idea of warm champagne, gin & tonics, caviar, etc., was unthinkable, so we buried the liquor & tonic outside in the snow, & put the caviar, vegetables, etc., etc., in a well-fortified wheelbarrow in the garage.

 

[AlexanderCrane]

Good save.

It would be an interesting fact, to discover how much power one saves by using the frozen earth instead of powering a freezer through the winter.

I'm such a revivalist.

 

[Michael in FtW]

Check your local library for the FoxFire books ... I know one of them has a section about using a pit as a makeshift root cellar. Another good resource would be Mother Earth News.

Oh, to answer your question about kim chee, it is a fermented Korean pickled cabbage. In rural areas it was often burried in the ground for storage.

 

[YT2095]

I have the most fantastic book on this sort of thing, writen by a guy (died a few years ago) that ran several small holdings, it called Self Sufficiency, and it goes into detail about how to build these clamps, and where and what materials

next time I`m at my gardens, I`ll get the book out my shed and give you more details about it, it`s a Fantastic read in it`s own right, and covers Everything!

 

[buckytom]

i guess it depends on your clime, and what you're trying to preserve.

it wouldn't work in the tropics without a ton of salt or acid, and conversely, you'd have to go below the frost line in colder places or risk everything freezing solid. if you dig that deep, you might as well dig a cellar.

years ago, many appalachian trail thru hikers buried large, well sealed cans of foodstuffs at easily accesible points on the trail before they began their journey.
it made restocking much easier, so the hikers could carry fewer days rations, and often saved a few extra miles into a town to reach a post office.

much of it was dried or canned foods, (and other small items like string, tape, batteries, moleskin, etc.), but it's still the same principal. bury the food to store and protect it, as well as stabilize the temp.

 

[Snoop Puss]

YT, is this the book?

Amazon.co.uk: New Complete Self-sufficiency: The Classic Guide for Realists and Dreamers: Books: John Seymour,Will Sutherland,E.F. Schumacher

I've been thinking about getting it.

 

[YT2095]

the one I have is by the same author co-authored with his wife Sally Seymour.
but yeah, it`s the same fella and same subject matter

 

[Jikoni]

i guess it depends on your clime, and what you're trying to preserve.

it wouldn't work in the tropics without a ton of salt or acid, and conversely, you'd have to go below the frost line in colder places or risk everything freezing solid. if you dig that deep, you might as well dig a cellar.

years ago, many appalachian trail thru hikers buried large, well sealed cans of foodstuffs at easily accesible points on the trail before they began their journey.
it made restocking much easier, so the hikers could carry fewer days rations, and often saved a few extra miles into a town to reach a post office.

much of it was dried or canned foods, (and other small items like string, tape, batteries, moleskin, etc.), but it's still the same principal. bury the food to store and protect it, as well as stabilize the temp.

Morbid thread?! I have heard of of various ways of preserving food before but never burying. My granma had no fridge and she lived in very warm weather, she used the sun to dry meat and then hang it over the cooking place, so it got smoked and it lasted a long time.Has anyone actually tried this?

 

[Constance]

I have a book called Stocking Up, by the Editors of Organic Gardening. It describes how and what you can store underground. They recommend burying the food between thick layers of straw to make digging easier.

I would imagine that field mice could be quite a problem. I don't know if they would eat potatoes, carrots and such, but they nest underground, so be ready for a surprise when you dig up your vegetables!

The book also tells how to dry foods, Jikoni. DH has made dried, smoked venison jerky. The method is probably similar to the one your mother used.

 

[BreezyCooking]

I do seem to recall reading a homesteading/preserving/gardening book where - in order to prevent the rodent predation thing - you buried metal garbage cans that had drainage holed punched in them, & layered root vegetables in those, using sand & straw between the layers.