reaping what we sow

We have a little room, tucked under a slanting roof, just off our kitchen. The gentleman we bought the original cabin from used this room when he tied his fly fishing lures. Truth be told, I think it was his "man cave". When we first started coming up here, it was Gretta's bedroom. Then it was Peter's office for a bit when he did some consulting work. After our big renovation it became the "room of requirement", a lá Harry Potter. 

One wall is filled with shelving and it serves as our pantry. Baking pans, assorted small appliances, dried beans, canned foods and cookbooks are stored here. My very own red toolbox is on the top shelf. Don't mess with it. :-)

A twin bed is tucked into the other side of the room, allowing overflow sleep space for when we have a very full house. Sometimes I sneak in here with a mug of tea, curl up and read cookbooks. The curtains are made from some of my Grammie Lowry's table cloths. The rug on the floor is made of old jeans. You can find my tutorial here. The quilt is made from an old and favorite chambray dress that I wore for years and a stack of flannel squares.

Under the rug, in the floor of the "room of requirement" is a trap door, with stairs leading down to the root cellar. How lucky are we to have a house with a root cellar? It tends to stay a pretty steady 45-50 degrees year round. There are no windows and the floor has a layer of pebbles, covered by thick plastic sheeting.

Right now, we have a whole collection of flower bulbs potted up, waiting to come upstairs. Bit by bit, we will perch them on our windowsills, forcing them into bloom all winter long. Hyacinths, paper whites, têt-à-têt daffodils and amaryllis will remind us that the winter shall pass, and the world will be green again come springtime.

We had a good onion harvest and many of them are stored in the mesh bottomed box, here. We bought some butternut squash from our friend "Farmer Chip" at Pebble Brook Farm, just up and over the ridge, and they are stashed down here too.

We did not grow potatoes this year, so we have fingerlings, reds and Yukon golds from Chip as well.

We store our carrots and beets in buckets of playground sand. Here are some of the beets...they have been sending up shoots in the pitch dark.

Remember the leeks I harvested before the first hard freeze? They are doing OK, planted in a bucket of potting soil. I'm thinking potato, celeriac, leek soup sometime next week...

(Our garlic, which don't store as well in a root cellar, are nestled in a covered basket, pushed under the bed, where it's not quite as cool.)

I do so love having some of our produce tucked under the floor of the "room of requirement". It's part of the dream we'd been dreaming for years. We know where the food came from and how it was grown and harvested. When the snow is blowing outside our windows in February, what's on our plates will be evidence of the fruits of our labor. We'll be reminded of the quiet evenings of weeding with a glass of wine in hand, listening to the breezes in the balsams and the birds as they settle down for the night. I think I've already forgotten the mosquitos!

xo