ambience: Irish Harp and Octave Mandolin – Mickey Zekely
In the days before refrigeration, perishable foods were stored in iceboxes. But where did the ice come from? I’m Jim Metzner, and this is the Pulse of the Planet.
In the northeastern United States and elsewhere, ice was commercially harvested from ponds and rivers, stored in icehouses and shipped via railroad to urban areas. The first step in the process was cutting the 14-inch thick ice into cakes, with help of a saw plow harnessed to a horse. The cut cakes of ice were floated across the pond to a conveyor belt, which moved them up to the top of the icehouse to a chute. From here, gravity and manpower moved the cakes into position. John Brandow worked in an ice harvesting crew in upstate New York during the nineteen thirties. He tells us what happened next.
“That chute was steep and a hundred and ten pound cake of ice came down that chute with quite some speed. And the switchman who sat at the bottom of the chute used a spike to sink into the cake as it swept past and then he would divert that cake in a direction to his right and even behind him sometimes so that it would be placed where he needed it to be, to make less work for the persons who were placing the ice exactly where it went. And then once he had one side of the icehouse filled, he would then shift his position and do the same operation to his left. This would usually take seven or eight days of good weather to fill the ice house.”
During a typical winter in upstate New York, mid-January was the height of the ice harvest season.
Pulse of the Planet is presented by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.
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