Years ago I was talking with an elderly man that had spent his entire life here in northern Michigan. We were discussing homesteading and he was remarking on all the incredible resources we have available in the local area. Water, forests, cold.... Wait what? Cold? Yes he said when he was young most all the local homesteads had ice houses. When you realize the amount of energy that is used annually in northern regions on creating cold during the warmer months for refrigeration this really starts to sink in. When we first established our homestead twenty years ago there were no Amish in our area. Now there are over thirty families. Most of those homes have ice houses. Some homes with businesses have a couple. Sometimes though several smaller families will share a larger one. If you enjoy community this is the ticket. The Amish will cut ice once the ponds have frozen and work together as a community to harvest it and haul it back to their homes with their horse teams. It is really fun to take it all in. When these families first started moving in they were bringing in semi loads of ice houses at a time to supply everyone. I asked one of the families I had gotten to know if I could order one as well, and they were glad to include me.
In the olden days ice was stored in sawdust. A friend of mine inherited a marina close to Lake Michigan many years ago, and was telling me that when he took over the marina, there was a building that was on the property that had previously been a massive ice house. It was used to store ice to ship locally caught fish in the summer time to Chicago. It hadn’t been used in over twenty years. They went in with big front end loaders to remove the mountains of sawdust that remained. Under the sawdust they still found chunks of ice and the ground was still frozen. The footprint of the building was so large, and had been used for so many years, the ground had a permafrost that had developed that the mountains of sawdust had continued to protect. He was astonished.
Today the modern ice house is a marvel. They are designed with eight inch high density foam. Because they are so well insulated, they no longer require sawdust. Therefore you can pack it full of just ice. You want to be careful to only open the door during the coolest part of the day. I will go to get ice first thing in the morning when it is needed. I use a large Yeti cooler as a refrigerator.
I chose to take a different rout though in regards to harvesting ice. I was visiting one of the Amish families one day before I got my ice house and they let me take a peek inside theirs. It smelled strongly of a pond of course. Not the most pleasant smell, especially to be placing with your food. in your refrigerator. This got me thinking. I have a friend that makes commercial quantities of jam. She has white four gallon buckets that she gets frozen fruit in, and then sells them to me to use on the farm. When I can see in the weather forecast that we will be having nights near zero I started filling these buckets up with water, within about two inches from the top to allow for expansion. It usually takes several days for them to freeze solid. I use to take the buckets into my seedling greenhouse and let them thaw just enough so I could get the ice out of the bucket, then carry the ice to the ice house. I no longer do that. I had so much ice left over the following fall I decided to put the ice in, in the buckets. The first year I did this I made a mistake though. I put the buckets in facing up. This didn’t allow any of the melting water to move away from the block. You see an ice house will have small weep holes in the floor to allow all excess water to flow outside. Ice sitting in water melts much faster. I was out of ice in late August. Then I turned the buckets upside down the next season. Bingo. The ice stored beautifully. Because I am not taking it out of the buckets my labor is a fraction of what I had been doing. Compared to the labor the Amish are expending to get their ice, there is no comparison. I almost feel guilty because of how easy it is, and my ice is pure enough I could drink it after it melts.
I am convinced that ice houses could be used in areas that traditionally they have never been. I know someone that has a heavy rubber pond liner that they put out and put just a few inches of water in. It freezes much faster than my buckets. It wouldn’t need a deep cold spell. After it freezes they bust up the ice in chunks and put it in the ice house. This could definitely be accomplished in areas where lakes and ponds do not freeze thick enough to work on. I believe ice houses could be possible as far south as Tennessee, if the pond liner was large enough, and the timing was good. It just needs to be below freezing for a few days.
There is one more application that I want to explain to you. There are several Amish families that purchased large ice houses, much larger than they needed, in order to make a walk in cooler. I have been in these rooms. It is amazing. When they are butchering livestock in the summer or have a large amount of produce that needs refrigeration. They have insulated adjacent rooms that the ice house door opens into. All they have to do is crack the ice house door a small amount and it fills the room with cold air. This is only possible though with a much larger unit.
In the late 1800's one of the local lumber Barrons in our area had an underground pipe installed from the huge city ice house to his home down hill. His mansion was fully air conditioned with that setup. That home no longer enjoys that possibility though because the large ice houses are no more.
I hope this article is a blessing too many, and food for thought. God bless your homesteads!
