Tuesday's Folklore Photo - An Old School Root Cellar

Last week I had the opportunity to go back out into the field and get my hands dirty with some serious archaeology. My graduate supervisor Barry Gaulton has been going out to a site in Sunnyside, Newfoundland, for the past several years with Steve Mills, and each time he goes out into the field he brings eager graduate students with him: this year it was my turn! The site is a 17th century winter house in the woods near the water, and based upon some of the artifacts we found it probably dates to the 1660's, and was probably used for only a year or two.

One great discovery this season was the location of what was most likely a root cellar to the west of where the house was. It's a little hard to tell in the photo, but this root cellar is built from mounded earth, and we uncovered a section of staining in the earth that was likely a 4 foot span of wooden flooring in the center. Although there isn't any remains left, the top of the root cellar would have been built of a combination of earth, rock and wood, drawn from the local resources at hand.

Root cellars would have been just as important 350 years ago as they were 50 years ago, or even today, especially during a cold winter with limited access to supplies other than what you could hunt or gather for yourself. I decided to share the photo I had of the root cellar this week for the folklore photo as a teaser for a blog post later on this week about my trip out to Sunnyside, and because root cellars are cool, and full of folklore-y goodness! And you can't go wrong with one from the 17th century.

Exploring Our Roots: A Heritage Inventory of Newfoundland’s Root Cellars

In 2011, the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador (HFNL) hosted the agricultural-themed folklife festival, Seeds to Supper, to celebrate farming and gardening traditions in the province. To complement these celebrations, an architectural inventory of over 150 root cellars was conducted and has been added to Memorial University’s Digital Archives Initiative (DAI).

The research was conducted by Crystal Braye, hired through MUN’s Division of Co-operative Education, in collaboration with Julie Pomeroy of the Agricultural History Society (AHS),

Crystal has recently completed a report on her root cellar work with HFNL, and we are pleased to release it as the third in our Occasional Paper on Intangible Cultural Heritage series. If you have an interest in root cellars, folk architecture, or traditional knowledge, give it a read!

Download Occasional Paper 003 as a pdf

"Living Spaces" book launch Monday, March 18th

Most new students spend their first weeks of school in stuffy classrooms. But in a new program through the Department of Folklore at Memorial University, new graduate students spent their first days exploring a small Bonavista Bay fishing community. During the last three weeks of September 2012, the Department of Folklore introduced a new course for incoming graduate students on cultural documentation techniques.

“I decided that I would focus on the community of Keels in Bonavista Bay,” says course organizer Dr. Gerald Pocius. “Unlike previous field courses, this one would actually take place outside the classroom, with students living away from their usual environments, focusing on a place and people different to most of them.”

Timed to coincide with this year’s 20th anniversary of the cod moratorium, the field school examined how outmigration and gentrification affected the traditional cultural landscape of the Bonavista region, focusing on the last two inshore fishing families in the community of Keels. Students lived in the town, and worked to document buildings, including homes, fisheries buildings and root cellars. Along the way they interacted with and interviewed locals about their lives and work. The results of the field school, including architectural drawings and descriptions of some of the spaces studied have been put together in a booklet, “Living Spaces: The Architecture of the Family Fishery in Keels, Newfoundland,” edited by Pocius.

“Both the field school and the booklet have been a cooperative project between Memorial University and the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador,” says Dale Jarvis, folklorist with the foundation. “These types of partnerships are a great way to help students develop real-world skills, and to demonstrate to communities the type of research that is going on within the university. It also helps us with the foundation’s mandate of promoting and preserving the important architectural and intangible cultural heritage of this province.”

The booklet will be launched at a public event at 6pm, March 18th, 2013 at Bianca’s, 171 Water Street, St. John’s. The event is open to the public, though people are asked to RSVP with Christina Robarts at 739-1892 ext 7, or by email at christina@heritagefoundation.ca

Root Cellars Rock The Rooms

Coffee and Culture: Root Cellars
March 14, 2:30pm
The Rooms Theatre

How do you keep vegetables fresh without electricity? In a root cellar of course! From use in years past to modern day, root cellars have become iconic in Newfoundland and Labrador. Folklorist Crystal Braye and Sarah Ferber from Root Cellars Rock will be at The Rooms to tell you all about them. Presented in collaboration with the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador.

 

Root cellar photos courtesy of Crystal Braye.

Lectures, launches, and living spaces

In the March 2013 edition of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Update for Newfoundland and Labrador: we announce the launch of "Living Spaces: The Architecture of the Family Fishery in Keels, Newfoundland,” a report based on the 2012 Keels Folklore Field School, edited by Dr. Gerald Pocius; researchers Lisa Wilson and Christina Robarts provide articles celebrating International Women’s Day; we announce a series of March events related to cultural landscapes and root cellars; and we gear up for “Newfiki – A celebration of Eastern-European cultures in Newfoundland” with stories, music, art, and a pierogi-making workshop with instruction by the Department of Folklore’s Dr. Mariya Lesiv.

Contributors: Dale Jarvis, Lisa Wilson, Christina Robarts, Crystal Braye. 

Download the pdf version of the newsletter

Root Cellars, Repatriation of Remains, and Heritage Windows - ICH Update

In this edition of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Update for Newfoundland and Labrador: notes on the 3rd Annual Folklife Festival, Seeds to Supper; Crystal Braye digs in to the Root Cellar Project; we learn why the Food Security Network thinks that Root Cellars Rock; Torngâsok Cultural Centre archaeologist Jamie Brake documents a 1927 incident involving anthropologist William Duncan Strong and the second Rawson-MacMillan Subarctic Expedition, and the 2011 repatriation of the remains of 22 Inuit from the Field Museum in Chicago; and Melissa Squarey reports on tradition bearer James "Jim" Youden, a heritage carpenter and window maker who is the recipient of the Newfoundland Historic Trust’s 2011 Southcott Award for Heritage Craftsperson.

Download the pdf

Add to the collaborative Root Cellars of Newfoundland and Labrador Map!

We are just launching our collaborative Root Cellar Mapping Project! Do you know where there is a root cellar, somewhere in Newfoundland and Labrador?

Map it!  You'll need to be logged in to your Google account to add a spot on the map, which is at:

http://tinyurl.com/rootcellarmap

If possible, we'll visit your root cellar in person and add it to the digital root cellar we are building as part of Memorial University's Digital Archive Initiative. Got a memory about a root cellar that no longer exists? Map that too!

Rules are simple:

* Root cellars only
* Don't move other people's pins
* Don't be a jerk

We'll delete anything that we feel doesn't fit.

Once you are looking at the map, hit the "Edit" button, which should be visible if you are logged in to your Google Account. Select the blue pin from the menu. Stick it where your root cellar is (or was) and tell us about it.

Root Cellar Typology for Newfoundland and Labrador

We are digging away on our root cellar project, documenting different root cellars, taking photographs, making measurements, and interviewing people about root cellar traditions.

One idea we've come up with is to create a map of root cellars across the province, to see what kind of root cellars are most common where. So, I've taken a first stab at creating a root cellar typology, listing out the different kinds of root cellars we've found to date.

If you know of a different kind, or have a suggestion for a root cellar for us to look at, or root cellar owner to interview, contact Crystal Braye, our down-to-earth folklore co-op student, at folklore.coop@gmail.com.

Dual Entrance Cellar - set into the ground and lined with rocks/concrete. A shed is built over top of the cellar, with its own door. Access to the cellar is through a ground-level door into the cellar, and through a hatch door incorporated into the floor of the shed.

Hatch and Shed Cellar - set into the ground and lined with rocks/concrete. Beams and planks are laid over the hole, with a hatch door incorporated into the ceiling/floor, along with a ladder for access. A shed is then built over the top of the cellar.

Hillside Cellar - dug out of a hillside, lined with rocks or concrete, and then a ceiling is attached to overhead beams. Access through a ground-level door on the front.

Above Ground Cellar - freestanding cellar, covered thickly with sod on the outside, lined inside with rocks/concrete, with access through a ground-level door on the front.

Above Ground Hatch – like the Above Ground Cellar, but with access from a hatch at the top.

Walk-in Cool Room – Insulated room, part of a house or outbuilding.

Barrel Cellar – A small root cellar made of a converted barrel or drum.

Unidentified Ruin

Others?

Digital Root Cellar storing memories as part of Memorial's Digital Archives Initiative

This abandoned root cellar, located on Thorpe's Road, St. Phillip's, is one of the root cellars that will be documented as part of this summer's Seeds to Supper Festival.  This year, the province's third annual folklife festival will celebrate agricultural traditions past and present.

The root cellar research project is being conducted by Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador (HFNL) folklore coop student Crystal Braye, and Agricultural History Society intern Julie Pomeroy.  The pair will be photographing, measuring, and drawing cellars wherever they can root them out, as well as conducting interviews with root cellar owners and farming families.

All collected photographs, drawings and audio interviews will be stored, nice and cool, in our digital root cellar, as part of Memorial's Digital Archives Initiative and HFNL's ongoing Intangible Cultural Heritage inventory.  The research is funded in part with grants through the Department of Tourism's Cultural Economic Development Program, and the Helen Creighton Folklore Society.

If you have a root cellar and are interested in participating, or for more information, please contact Crystal Braye via email folklore.coop@gmail.com or telephone at 709-739-1892 ext. 5

Newfoundland and Labrador Root Cellar Bibliography now online

As part of this summer's Seeds to Supper festival, folklore co-op intern Crystal Braye has pulled together a bibliography about root cellars in Newfoundland and Labrador.

The resource includes a list of articles and reference materials concerning root cellars in the province, as well as links to do-it-yourself, how-to articles, for those who might want to make their own root cellar.

http://www.mun.ca/ich/inventory/rootcellarbibliography.php

If you know of a published article on Newfoundland and Labrador root cellars that we've missed, let us know and we'll add it to the list.

Root cellars, young folklorists, and Seeds to Supper Festival launch

In this edition of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Update for Newfoundland and Labrador, we turn the sod on our Seeds to Supper Festival, the province's third annual folklife festival; young folklorists hit Water Street and work on heritage fairs projects; we explore the tradition of root cellars; and the Heritage Foundation takes on a new public folklore co-op student.

Download the pdf.

Cupids 400 Cultural Tourism Forum - Arts Section

Last week, I was in North River as part of the Cupids 400 Cultural Tourism Forum. In the afternoon, participants broke into groups to discuss issues of particular interest to them as business owners, volunteers, municipal officials and community leaders. I was asked to facilitate the group on the arts.

The arts (visual, literary, performing arts such as theatre, music and dance) provide a great way to generate activity in a community by: drawing visitors, fostering and supporting the creative talent of youth and artists, enhancing the local quality of life, and giving new life to heritage structures.

Participants brainstormed on possible arts related activities, and one thing we discussed were the key historic themes and traditions in the Cupids and wider Baccalieu Trail area. While not a complete list, some of the local traditions and themes participants identified include:

Fly-tying
Heritage train stations
Archaeology
Pirate history (Hr Grace, Carbonear)
Carbonear Island
Rug hooking
Fiddler traditions
Lancers, traditional dance/ square dancing/ Scottish and NL dancing
Quilting/knitting/spinning, trigger mitts, socks
Boat building
Lobster pot making
Carving, scrimshaw, animal horn
Furniture making
Painting
Photography (modern and historic)
Traditional music
Ballad singing
Stories
Mending nets
Leatherwork
Culinary arts – jams, recipes, rum, dogberry wine, moonshine, winery
Concerts/plays/recitations/mummering/janneying
Wake recitations
Wren boys
Live oral history interviews
Running the Goat
Architecture, stages, root cellars
Fairies
Legends, folklore, ghost stories
Pottery
Mat painting
Jam doughboys on Good Friday
Colcannon, Hallowe’en
Lighthouses

Plenty of work there to keep a team of folklorists busy for quite some time!