Ice harvesting 1

A passing comment in a recent post deserves further exploration. The comment? That Grandpa Chris, Daniel, and Diet Quiring were cutting ice on the Big Blue River when Ruth was born 16 February 1937. This is not something that those of us born in the generations following are likely to have experienced, but learning about it will give us a better sense of life in the 1930s. This post will attempt to lay out some basic facts about ice cutting, then end with questions for those who know to answer, to clarify the details of our family’s situation.

Although a refrigerator for home use was invented in 1913, this technology was not widely adopted until the 1930s, after the development of a Freon-based cooling unit. Of course, one could not operate a refrigerator without electricity, and that convenience did not arrive on the Lushton farm until 1946 (see here). So how did Bullers cool food items before then?

 People of a certain age probably have heard a refrigerator occasionally referred to as an icebox. Use of this term is not a case of modern slang or sloppy language; rather, it reflects the historical reality that, before refrigerators came into wide use, most families cooled their food with an item aptly named an icebox.

The outside design could range from simple and utilitarian, like the icebox pictured here, all the way to the ornate and elegant, such as one shown in the DeForsest, Wisconsin, Historical Society article on iceboxes (here).

The technology and interior design were simple: one put a block of ice in one part of an enclosed area and kept the food in the other parts of the enclosed area. Think of the insulated coolers that campers take with them these days.

The key interior design element was related to sealing and insulation. To be effective, an icebox had to keep the cool in and warm air out. One website explains that iceboxes were “lined with tin or zinc and insulated with various materials including cork, sawdust, and seaweed were used to hold blocks of ice and ‘refrigerate’ food. A drip pan collected the melt water - and had to be emptied daily” (see here).

Obviously, an icebox worked only if one had a steady supply of ice. But how does one get all that ice when there is no freezer to supply it? We return to the story of Ruth’s birth. Grandpa and crew were not cutting river ice just for grins; they were harvesting ice that would supply the family’s cooling needs during the upcoming months.

With a river nearby, our family did not need to rely (much? at all?) on companies that harvested ice commercially, stored it in icehouses, and sold it throughout the year. They could cut the ice for themselves, and so they did. (To read more about the ice industry in Nebraska, see the Nebraska State Historical Society entry on the topic here.)

Presumably Grandpa had all the necessary tools to harvest ice blocks from the river: at least an ice saw and a pair of tongs for grabbing the blocks. I would imagine that the blocks were hauled back to the house in a wagon (horse-drawn? tractor-drawn?), then packed tightly in straw in whatever place the Bullers used to store ice.

Albert Friesen reminisces about the process of cutting, storing, and using ice on the Wessels Living History Farm website:

During the winter when that pond would freeze solid, we’d go and cut ice and they had ice saws. You did it by hand, just like wood. Saw it like that… You’d slide that, put tongs around it and pull it up along the skid way, up into that wagon … and then haul it to the ice house. That would be a sort of silo, a deep hole, and they’d pack this ice in there and then with straw. You had to have straw around it or else it would melt in the summertime. And we went to ice houses in the summertime and got ice to make ice cream. (here)

With all that as background, we are ready to pose particular questions about our family’s cutting, storage, and use of ice back in the 1930s.

• Was the ice cut with a hand saw or with a horse-drawn saw as pictured here?


• Did Grandpa have his own ice saw like the one pictured above? something else?


• Did the family use tongs like the pair pictured above? something else?


• Where did the family store its harvested ice: in an above-ground icehouse? in a pit or silo? something else?


• How much ice could be harvested each winter and stored away for later use?


• How long did the ice harvested in the winter last during the following spring and summer?


• Did the family provide all its own ice, or was there also need to purchase ice to use?


• Did the family have an icebox like that pictured above? something else?


• Where in the house was the icebox kept?


• What food items were kept in the icebox?


• After the farm was electrified, how long was it before the family got an electric refrigerator?


• Special bonus question: What was the first electricity-driven household item that the family owned?

Send Buller Time your answers and other memories so they can be shared with one and all!