[AT] Putting the tractor to use - Ice Houses

[charlie hill]

My grandfather used to put his potatoes and sweet potatoes under a hay stack 
in the pasture.
He'd dig a shallow hole, line it with straw, pile the potatoes on it in 
layers with straw, cover the
complete pile with dirt and then build the hay stack so that the hay covered 
the potato mound.
When he needed potatoes he'd "scratch out" what he needed, recover the mound 
and re-arrange
the hay to keep it covered.

Charlie

-----Original Message----- 
From: Chuck Bealke
Sent: Monday, June 16, 2014 12:19 PM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] Putting the tractor to use - Ice Houses

On 6/15/2014 11:13 PM, Ralph Goff wrote:
> On 6/15/2014 7:25 PM, Mike wrote:
>> If I'm not mistaken they used to pack the ice in sawdust to keep it from
>> melting, maybe that's why it's lower. I'm not old enough to remember any
>> of that, but some of the guys might be.
>>
>> Mike M
> Yes, sawdust or straw was used to insulate the snow/ice that was put in
> the ice house in winter. We used to have a nice little log ice house
> here when I was a kid .. Long gone now but I have dreams of building a
> replica of it some day..
>
> Ralph in Sask.
Ralph,

Remember a neighbor talking about storing ice sawed off ponds in such
houses.  Another trick his family used to preserve vegetables was to
store them under a huge straw pile. He remembered this well, as one of
the men that would roam looking for work (depression in the 30's?) on
farms got mad about his dismissal (for reason) after being hired for a
while and sneaked back at night and torched the tall straw pile they
had.  It had wisely been situated well away from buildings.
As you probably know, there was a huge worldwide ice trade in the late
1800's.  Found a nice taste of that in Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade

Chuck Bealke



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