9/2024....Many thanks!....I'm in Columbus, Ohio and I'm 70,.....My mother grew up in Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1920s, and I was so happy when she described life in those early years before people had refrigerators. She loved telling her stories and I loved hearing them. She described how life was slower, and people knew their "Ice Men", by name. They came by her family's house and their father's deli, delivering ice, weekly. In Columbus, at this very moment, our city is tearing down the last two commercial Ice Houses. Younger people know nothing about life in the 1800s, 1900s, or much of anything before modern technology. I am a student of the Industrial Revolution,....I'm self educating myself about the old ways and bygone eras. In the 1980s, my girlfriend and I rented an old apartment built in 1896,....it hadn't been modernized, except there was electricity installed in the 1930s,....there was indoor plumbing, but the fixtures were old. The ceilings were 12 foot tall, the kitchen was classic 1920s. In the style sometimes called Hoosier-style cabinets. Before built-ins,...the kitchen cabinets were like free standing furniture, well built wooden cabinets with sturdy chromed brass fittings. We restored the kitchen, to the original look. We had the original 1900s, extra large, clawfoot bathtub. Our kitchen sink was an old style, porcelain over iron, farm house, styled one which came with our apartment. When we moved away, we bought a house built in 1905,....modern by comparison but still old styled. We both like the older houses, and features.
We live in PA. As you mentioned ice ponds and icehouses used to be a big deal around these parts. The first time I was told you could keep ice for a whole year through the summer I couldn’t believe it. It’s amazing the skills and know how that’s been lost to technology these days!
Been trying to do that myself from what I remembered my great-grand-father telling me. Thank you so much for this video! I found details I was missing!
There was an ice house down the street next to the pond but it had been turned into a roller skating rink. I worked on an old eastern rig dragger I was cook and had to maintain the icebox and the grub
I wonder about the possibility of building a food storage area within an ice house so you could put food there and not have to move the ice too a smaller box.
Guess it just proves that with every action there is a positive and negative, don't pay for heating, light or transportation, then be ready for a great deal of hard labour. Cheers.
Yeah it's great if only a few people do it, once a population gets big enough it's not viable to do it without depleting the water source for surrounding farmland.
@@seanmce8132respectfully, the amount of water harvested for ice is negligible compared to what's used for watering row crops. You can literally dig a pond specifically for a community that also doubles as emergency water for drought seasons in the warmer months.
Lol 'I'm a lazy Englishman' ....im from England and the farmers and charcoal makers will object to that Hahaha!! Yes some estates over here still have ice houses (although many not in use) but a great historical item.
Kerry - Question: Do your Amish neighbors have a hole drilled in the base of their chest freezer to drain the water, once the ice starts to melt? Or do they pump it out somehow with a battery powered sump pump? I enjoy your videoes and have admired the Amish for years! Their farms and lifestyle remind me of my grandparents’ farm when I was a kid. They too were homesteaders, in every sense of the word. My grandmother trader her eggs to a nearby country store for what little “groceries” she needed such as salt, flour, sugar, baking powder, and cooking oil. They raised all their own meat and vegetables. Gosh, what I would give to get to go back in time and visit that farm again!
Great question! I will ask William. I am not sure on how he drains the water. Your grandparents farm sounds great. WIliams farm is amazing. We hope to do more videos showing his farm and growing seasons. Thx
I am looking for information on how to build a modern ice shed, there are no lakes or pound close buy me, but we do have acces to lots of free square four gallon buckets, we could just fill them out of our well and leave them outside to freeze.
I wonder, with plastic now... if you filled bags of water, tied them off and loaded up the ice house with the door open in late fall, If they could freeze all the way through, Be an insane amount less work, significantly cleaner ice as well
