Ice Harvesting in our Backyard

By: Christina Ely, Registrar for Plowline: Images of Rural New York


Since first cataloging images of ice harvesting at Millers Mills last May, I have many times returned to the images for another look. For whatever reason, the photos captivated me – soon becoming some of my favorite images in the Dante Tranquille Collection on Plowline: Images of Rural New York.

 
The tradition of ice cutting and harvesting beckons back to the early 1800s, and a time when people began to find ways to keep meats, dairy and produce fresh for longer periods of time. Before that time, Americans often stored their perishable foodstuffs in deep wells, springs or storage cellars, or opted for salting or drying their meat. In the early part of the 19th century, ice houses began cropping up on family farms where ponds or lakes were present or nearby. Ice harvesting became a community affair taking place in “good ice-makin’ weather” during January and February, at which time the entire community would work to fill everyone’s ice houses in a matter of four to six weeks. Farmers gathered up their axes, saws, ice hooks, sleighs and teams of horses to join in the effort.

Ice harvesting is not an overly complicated process, requiring as few or as many different tools as desired. The harvester could use as few as three or four tools, however, over the course of time around sixty tools were invented to help in the process.

So, how complicated is ice harvesting? Here is an illustrated look at ice harvesting with photos from Millers Mills taken in 1958.
Snow was usually removed from the ice with a horse-drawn scraper.

A hole was then bored in the ice and the depth of the ice measured.  In early times, axes and saws were employed to cut through the scored ice-later giving way to markers and ice plows with teeth, each tooth progressively longer than the one before it that carved a straight line in the ice.  The ice was marked out like a grid, and then cut through with a four to five foot ice saw or was broken apart with a bar.

Hooks, tongs or a horse rigged to the block, were used to extract the block of ice from the water. 

Ice blocks were then slid across the ice and moved to a sleigh, wagon or other mode of transportation and taken to the ice house where they were unloaded using perhaps a tool or two, human muscle and a plank.

Would you like to try ice harvesting yourself? Then join in on a traditional ice harvest in Millers Mills located in West Winfield, New York on Sunday, February 13, 2011 starting at 11 am. This is a long standing tradition there, dating back so many years that no one actually knows when it even began as a community winter event. Traditional tools and methods are used right down to the team of horses and sleigh. Only one modern convenience is used and that is the gas powered machine used to score the ice the day before to the harvest. The harvest is a fundraiser sponsored by Grange #581. What do they do with the 300-500 blocks of ice? They store it in the ice house until the summer when they make ice cream for the town’s Ice Cream Social. A lot of work, but for a sweet reward!

To see more photos of the 1958 Ice Harvest in Millers Mills visit Plowline: Images of Rural New York.


Images above in order of appearance:
 Scraping.  Illustration from Scribner's Monthly, 1875
Ice Cutting. Millers Mills, 1958. Dante Tranquille. Plowline: Images of Rural New York, The Farmers’ Museum, Cooperstown, NY.F0001.2010(008)f.
Ice Harvesting, 1958. Dante Tranquille.  Plowline: Images of Rural New York, The Farmers’ Museum, Cooperstown, NY.  F0001.2010(103)a.
Ice Cutting. Millers Mills, 1958. Dante Tranquille. Plowline: Images of Rural New York, The Farmers’ Museum, Cooperstown, NY.  F0001.2010(008)b.
Ice Cutting. Millers Mills, 1958. Dante Tranquille. Plowline: Images of Rural New York, The Farmers’ Museum, Cooperstown, NY.  F0001.2010(008)g.