Old farmhouse cellar was life sustaining

We lived in two houses on our farm when I was growing up. We estimated that the old farmhouse had probably stood for nearly 100 years when we dismantled it in 1953, getting ready to build the house which stands in its place on the farm today. Our “new” farmhouse will be 65 years old when summer turns to fall later in this year 2018.

I’ve been thinking about the old-fashioned cellar which was located under the old house where I spent the first 13 years of my growing up. The old cellar, though never a very attractive or inviting place, had a major part in our way of life through the 1940s and early 1950s.

We always had a large garden across the drive from our house, and we spent much of the spring, summer and fall seasons growing and processing food items to be stored in the cellar to carry us through the winters. Of course, we used many of the things we picked from the garden in fresh form, carrying them directly from the garden to the kitchen to become part of our daily meals. But a major portion of our garden stuff was canned in sealed glass jars and stored on wood plank shelves that lined the sides of the cellar below ground level. Memories of our canning jars and lids, carrying labels with names like Mason, and Kerr, Ball, and others long forgotten, may have solidified my sustained opinion that foods stored in glass have superior taste and quality over foods canned in metal or plastic containers. Some of the old canning jars were pretty primitive in appearance. I remember some of Mom’s large half-gallon canning jars as being made of a bluish glass, with glass lids which were fastened by metal wire-like bails which pressed a flexible seal between the two glass parts. Those were the really oldfashioned jars. The newer jars were of clear glass, topped by screw-on lids. The sealing part of the lid was flat metal, with a new seal around the lower part of the outer edge. The ring screwed on to hold the lid tight and sealed.

I recall that the canning process always began with sanitizing the jars. That meant giving them a good washing, then sanitizing them with boiling water. For the actual canning, the foods would be well cooked, the jars filled, and the lids, which had been immersed in piping hot water, would be applied. Then the jars would be set aside to cool, and hopefully, to seal. I remember the lids popping when each jar would vacuum seal, one by one. I think the idea was that as the jar cooled, vacuum would develop inside the jar, sealing the lid firmly. With a successful seal, the food could be counted on to last a long time. Some people used a pressure cooker when canning. I don’t know that I understand even to this day how that contributes to the sealing. Some foods, like jellies, were sealed by pouring melted paraffin over the top of the jelly. Finally, all the sealed jars were stored on the shelves in the cellar.

Our new house was built over a sizable basement, with a concrete floor and strong sand-block walls. In contrast, our old farmhouse cellar had dirt floor and dirt walls. Our cellar was basically a long pit about six feet deep under the full length of our back porch. It was long, about 40 feet, running almost the full length of the house. It could be a little creepy down there. The only light came in by a small window at each end, and the spiders tended to weave their webs here and there.

The spiders themselves seemed to stay hidden for the most part, but you would often run into a strand of a spider web as you made your way along. The entrance into the cellar was a door which was flat to the floor of the back porch. You lifted the door open, and walked down the wooden steps, making a left turn at the bottom before stepping onto the dirt floor.

Although our old cellar was a right primitive place, it played an essential part in our survival, very substantially sustaining our lives. Having a well-stocked cellar was a sense of security. Before the coming of farm electricity in 1945, we carried a lantern with us if we needed to go into the cellar at night. With the coming of electricity, Dad did modernize the cellar somewhat, installing a couple of bare-bulb lights. He even ran plumbing down there, setting up a basic shower for himself, using a piece of old linoleum as a floor cover. It was useful when coming in and cleaning up from a hot work day in the field. I don’t recall that any of the rest of the family ever used that shower. I guess we were more impressed with the nice bathtub in the new indoor bathroom up in the house.