Fixing & Cleaning Up Our Earth Cellar.

The farmers of yesteryear were smart.

Nowadays we could not imagine living without electricity. Hey, there are more uses for electricity apart from the computer and television ! Such as a fridge for instance.

If you have ever had a power failure for more than a few hours, you start to realize how much we rely on electricity to keep our food fresh. Look, it might be fine in the northern hemisphere's winter...you can stick it on the window sill and have frozen milk and cheese. But in the summer it gets a bit dicey, don't you think ?

Well, this is where the farmers of yesteryear were so clever. Earth Cellars are ingenious. To be honest, I never knew of them. Cellars yes, but earth cellars, no. When you see it from the outside, it looks just like an outbuilding. But it is actually a room with most of its walls built below the ground.

Yesterday we sported temperatures of 38 degrees. A scorcher of a day. A day when laundry was dry within an hour of being on the line. Stepping into the earth cellar, was like entering an air conditioned room. If it wasn't for the numerous spiders, I would instantly put a bed and TV inside.

You know, we have a lot of outbuildings and enough work for a month of Sundays. After more or less finishing the inside of our home, we took a breather with the rest. Apart from it costing a bit of dosh, Bob and I had spent our renovating-enthusiasm for a while.

But it is back....Bob and Albert braved the heat yesterday morning and started on making a shelving space for the cellar. Now we just need to clean and clear it out, and it will be a wonderful hidey hole from the heat...

They say, that if you put a ' fresh ' apple into the earth cellar, it will stay like that the whole year. One way to describe it would be a " cool, dry and dark " walk-inn larder.

Biggi

This is our earth cellar from the outside. The end of the building.

A real paradise for the " fixer-upper " enthusiast !

A rustic charm ?

I tell you, walking in is a personal challenge. Note all those spider web-villages hanging on the left of the door frame !

A storage space of individual decades ? Old wine barrel bottoms alongside an exercise ball !

Look how fabulous the new shelving is. Ready for all our homemade jams...