Today I would like to touch on the topic of modern life in the village and show my parents’ basement.
Our village's population was about 1,000 people for about 30-35 years. All the adults worked, and the children went to school and kindergarten. What I'm getting at is that every family's life was very similar. Income was modest, but they managed to survive moderately thanks to their vegetable gardens and farms.
The summer months were especially difficult—besides harvesting work at the state farm, the time for winter canning began at home. And we made a lot! For our family of three, we canned up to 100 jars of compote, 30-40 jars of cucumbers and tomatoes, plus salads, jam, lard, meat…
All this wealth was stored in the basement. There was no way around it! The entire harvest of fresh fruits and vegetables was also stored there, as were the hams, and the tubs of sauerkraut.
Life today is different—lazy. Every other house is abandoned; young people leave for the cities after school, trying never to return to the village. They don't want to work the land. Everything is available for purchase now, so they don't even put basements in new houses, and the old ones have long since fallen into disuse.
My parents are still young, just over 50. They live alone, but they don't slow down the pace and volume of work in the village. Either they've gotten used to it, or they understand that they won't be able to buy everything—there's no work, and retirement is still a long way off. We also prefer to go help, but we buy most of our groceries in the village, not from the store.
So, seven years ago, they built a new, spacious, and convenient basement under the summer kitchen. It's 2.3 meters deep and 3 meters by 3 meters. The walls are held in place by a concrete screed, the floor is earthen, and the ceiling is concrete slabs.
The basement entrance consists of 10 steps. Along one side of this corridor are various necessary and unnecessary items stored.
Below the threshold are a second set of double wooden doors. The photo shows their interior view. During the warmer months, we leave them open, but we cover the opening with fine-mesh metal mesh to keep mice out.
And beyond the doors lie untold riches. True, not all of them yet, because it's summer outside.
Here's a corner for potatoes. The floor here is covered with boards.
We store all the dug-up potatoes here, and we also set up boxes of seed potatoes nearby. Meanwhile, the potatoes are waiting their turn to be put into winter storage.
Garlic and onion braids will be hung inside.
Every year at the beginning of summer, we inspect and clean the basement: we go through the jars of preserved food and remove any leftover fruits and vegetables to feed to the livestock. After cleaning, we blowtorch the walls and whitewash them with slaked lime. We inspect the floors for rodents—never a single one has appeared. These measures help protect the harvest from fungus and other diseases, as well as pest damage.
We can't imagine our family's life without a basement. Whether in Soviet times or in today's villages, it's a lifesaver and feeds us all year round. What's most interesting is that many in the village consider having a basement a sign of wealth. But I consider its absence a sign of laziness.
Build cellars! Store your natural produce in them instead of buying unhealthy plastic food products from stores.
I looked at the preparations - they were finger-licking good!
We used to have a dacha outside the city (during my school years, in the early 2000s). We also had a large harvest and did some preserving. But we stored everything in the city, in our apartment. We lived on the ground floor, and our balcony had a crawlspace. And we stored everything under the balcony. But now, as the author rightly noted, everyone has become lazy now that you can easily buy everything at the store. So the dacha was sold. ((I miss the land.
A cellar is a must-have in the countryside. Although it's become fashionable to buy freezers and store everything there, freezing still won't replace pickled tomatoes, cucumbers, compotes, jam, or your own potatoes!