A. recently vacated his home office, leaving us with a mostly empty room upstairs. Good thing, because we need the space for squash storage.
Guess I know what we're bringing to Thanksgiving dinner this year.
Squash, unlike most other vegetables, likes to be stored in a warm, dry place. I was unwilling to have any significant square footage of our downstairs living space taken up with a ridiculous amount of squash. But most of the rest of the house is unheated.
A.'s former office, however, has a pass-through vent in the floor through which heat rises from the woodstove directly underneath. So while it's not exactly tropical in there, at least it doesn't actually freeze. Good enough.
The only problem with this storage area is that it's upstairs. And not that close to the stairs, either. Which is why I spent at least twenty minutes today ferrying hundreds of pounds of squash from the garden wall, into the dining room, through the library and living room, up the stairs, through the back hall, and finally into the office. It took me eleven trips. Eleven long, arduous trips. And there are still a couple of squash I haven't removed from the vine in the garden yet.
But! The majority of the squash have been safely stored away from the frost we're supposed to get tomorrow.
At least we know we won't starve this winter. Or lack potassium.
8 comments:
Where will A. have his office now? Mary in MN
Did you use a laundry basket? When we moved into our three story house in DC, I was always loading baskets to carry up, then up again, or reload for down. I am so very happy to live in a one story house now.
-moi
He's renting office space from another lawyer in a nearby village.
I used one of those re-usable grocery store bags for transport. It held as much as I could carry at one time. If I had filled a laundry basket with squash, I could never have lifted it and it would have broken the basket. Those suckers are HEAVY.
Kristin exaggerates not. One of those big blue suckers weighs close to twenty pounds--or the same as four 5-lb bags of flour.
A recommendation from one who has stored squash in the house....get some boxes to put them in and line them on the bottom with many layers of newspaper...because when one goes bad you have a floor full of juice first then goop. The smell will most likely tell you first before you see it..unless you check them pretty often.
Don't want to ruin your nice table or floors.
They are beautiful and abundant. It seems like every year you have a large quantity of something from the garden and so far it doesn't seem to be the same thing. :)
You should have the muscles of He-man. It will be great when the boys are old enough to help. Beth
Wow!! Those things are gorgeous. And numerous. I wish I could barter some from you!
Glad someone had a good squash year, mine stunk.
Can someone please high five "Anonymous" over there? Because that is a wonderful, useful, uncharacteristically helpful "Anonymous" comment.
My anonymous commenters are usually just swinging by to leave useless comments about bullshit or they're spam.
Also your squash are abundant and beautiful. Jealous over here!
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