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Summertime in the BelgradesContentsfor Printing
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The Cold Cellarby Charlotte Robinson When I was a child it was necessary for families to store foods for use throughout the winter — enough to last us until the next crop was ready in the early summer. Depending on the type of food, it was canned, dried, hung, or placed in baskets, crocks or boxes. The cold cellar area in our cellar had been created by building an extra wall parallel to the side wall. The room thus created was about 6-8 feet wide and 15-20 feet long. The one window was painted black to keep the sunlight out. There was one dim light in the room and we usually felt for things rather than actually seeing them. The room was also cool and dank and a little eerie. This kind of room might have been devised to protect that which was stored in it from the heat of the coal furnace and the dust created by the delivery of the coal down the chute and into the coal bin. There was a long square wooden tube that my father built which extended from about 4 inches above the floor, which of course was dirt, to the height of the window and then right-turned out of the window. This allowed any warm air to escape. It also allowed mice to enter and leave after filling up. There were spiders everywhere. The canned and pickled foods were stored in a separate smaller closet with shelves built on each side just far enough apart for quart bottles on one side and for pint bottles on the other side. In here the light was much brighter which seemed ironic as everything was in bottles, even the canned meat and chicken. In the cold cellar were stored several types of apples, quinces, potatoes, eggs in gooey waterglass, and pickles in large crocks, and squashes such as blue Hubbard, as big as a dressed turkey and even looking like one. The accepted method then of opening these thick-skinned vegetables was to drop one on the kitchen floor. It was too dangerous to try using the butcher knife. Also, there were beets, carrots and onions tied in bunches and hanging by their tops in the rafters — just low enough to tangle your hair. Cabbages were still wrapped in their large leaves and in bushel baskets. Turnips were stored in boxes. Pears were quartered and canned. Grapes after the first hard frost were made into juice. Currants, beans, peas, and other things were dried and then put into dry glass containers. Corn was stripped back and hung by its husk to dry. On Sundays, which were quiet days, after Sunday School, church and a mammoth dinner we gathered in the living room for a quiet time. We were often sent down with a small basket to the cold cellar to gather apples for a mid-afternoon snack. Nothing specific was ever said to us, but we all knew the routine. We felt around in the semi-dark, located those apples which were soft or with sore spots, and filled our baskets with these bruised apples. Next the paring and the operations to remove the bad parts and finally we had a small dish of apple parts. We never ate a whole perfect apple, except when one dropped from a tree in the fall. Two things that weren't stored were the parsnips, which were left in the ground until mid-March and then dug with the help of an old hatchet, and the bing cherries which were all eaten up by us or the birds. | ||