Underground plastic food barrel ?

Hello dear everyone !

After having been following the fora for a while now, I believe I'll start posting more and more, as I am getting ready to move to my wonderful piece of forest on the mountain.  Here come my first call for ideas, opinion, experiences, etc..

Our first step will be to move in a container but that will be the only building at the beginning. The kitchen (and the toilets, showers, etc) will be outside. I plan on digging a food cellar at some point but until then, what do I do with my huge bags of rice, lentils and other legumes ?
I was thinking of finding this kind of barrel but do you think it would be a good idea to put them underground and just leave the access to the lid ? Or even put them half underground and build a bench around the rest of them ?
Other than just not have barrels around, in the kitchen, can you think of reasons why I would want to burry them or why it wouldn't be a good idea ? And if I do, should I leave some air around them as insulation ? Would the plastic be bad for my soil ? What do you think ?

Thank you !!

Lots of people bury them as mini root cellars.  It keeps your stuff a lot more temperature stable. It doesn't work of the water table is too high.  It is a huge pain to get your stuff out so I would keep small portions of what you use all the time in an easy access pantry.

I think humidity could become a problem. Unless you are in a very dry climate, moist air will enter every time you open the lid.

You can buy moisture absorbing crystals. They can be dried in an oven and reused.

I don't know if dry newspaper would be enough, but it would help.

Think about laying them on the side with access from the front and the barrels placed in a bank on the side of a path. Or set them up and cover with lots of soul.

LOTS of soul!

;-)

Thank you everyone !

R Scott wrote:Lots of people bury them as mini root cellars.

Nice, it's always nice to know other people have been doing it before :)

R Scott wrote:LIt is a huge pain to get your stuff out so I would keep small portions of what you use all the time in an easy access pantry.

Yes, that's already what I do in my house. The food goes from huge bags in a cellar, to big plastic boxes in a pantry and to glass jar on the shelf :D

You can buy moisture absorbing crystals. They can be dried in an oven and reused.  

That's a good idea, I know where to find those but I didn't know you could reuse them :)

Think about laying them on the side with access from the front and the barrels placed in a bank on the side of a path.

That's what I was thinking of doing with my fridge :) I'm not sure if it will be easier to take stuff from those, as the opening isn't as big. We'll have to see and try :)

I'll let you know how it goes, thank you very much !

Wish I could do that here for some things, but I do have the water table issue.  No basements in Florida!  No root cellars either.

On the other hand, if I can find some locally I do want to saw them in half lengthwise and sink them mostly into the ground and fill them with water for tiny ponds. Loads of metal ones, but the 55gal size plastic harder to find.