by "functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
Published 02/21/2017 at 09:08
by "functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
Published 02/21/2017 at 09:08
Tags: Off Topic
STARS: 18
Recently I took my son to see one of the
last remaining “commercial” ice harvest operations
in the world. Despite the somewhat exotic sound of this, I didn’t have to travel far; it takes place in my hometown. And while it is a company performing the operation, they aren’t selling the ice alone; it’s part of a whole experience.
There’s a camp here that was started in 1897 as a place for families to escape the hustle and bustle of city life by “camping” in a cabin by a lake. Much like any other summer camp you’d think of these days, there’s a dining hall, athletic fields, various water-related activities, and guided hikes, bike trips, and other adventures. The difference is, the whole family gets to go. This place is wildly popular, rather expensive, and has some families who have been coming for 4 or 5 generations at this point.
The ice harvest is something they started early on as a practical method for chilling food and drinks through the summer - this actually used to be a big business around New England. In short, they take big chunks of ice from the lake, store them in an insulated building (insulated with sawdust, by the way), and deliver them to traditional ice boxes in each of the cabins as needed. Most people have probably never even seen a real ice box, but it’s pretty simple, and in principle no different from a modern Coleman cooler. You might see one in an antique store; I’ve seen one converted to a TV cabinet.
Every winter when the ice on the lake reaches the desired thickness, they round up their staff - some paid, some volunteer - along with a plethora of custom-built contraptions and spend three to five days cutting ice out of the lake and stashing it in their two ice houses - about 200 tons in total.
I’m sharing this here because I thought some would be interested in the engineering problems that have been pondered, refined, solved, and re-invented many times over the years. From using horses to trucks, hand saws to chain saws, and human power to hydraulic power, there’s still room for improvement here and there.
As an example of something that was no doubt a massive human-powered effort that’s now a light mechanical job, the saw they use to cut into the ice looks like something that a lot of handy tinkerers have had their hands on over the years. It’s a small (electric start!) gas engine running about a 30" diameter blade that can be raised and lowered with the flick of a lever. It runs on metal skids, and uses each prior cut as a guide to keep itself straight for the subsequent pass. They have a whole set of contraptions making sure each grid is cut perfectly square and straight in the first place.
There’s a custom-fabricated winch (also gas-powered, it looks like a brush cutter engine) that helps pull the ice up a ramp where it’s pushed into a flatbed truck by hand. There’s an ancient-looking metal ramp along with a new-looking extended wood platform that bridges the treacherous last few feet of lake where it meets the shore, so the truck can smoothly traverse from lake to land without bouncing half the ice blocks off the back, or breaking through the ice which is often compromised near the rocky shore.
Having not been in many years, I can’t say for sure when the change was made, but they used to simply cut a row of blocks, push them up a channel into the loading area, then repeat with the next row. Near the end of a day, you might be pushing blocks more than 100' down a channel. Now, they cut a large grid of blocks about 20' by 20', then float it (unbroken) down the open water space created by the last grid (they call each grid of blocks a “field”). The big saw goes just shy of cutting fully through the ice so that the field stays together, making it easier to move about 100 blocks at a time. With a little encouragement from a metal spike, the blocks separate and they are pushed a short way up a channel, then picked up by the winch and hook system, onto the raised platform. My son had a blast pushing ice along this channel, since so little force is required to move a row of floating ice blocks laterally in the water.
After making the short journey onto land, the blocks are slid out of the truck onto a chute with metal runners which is supported by a tractor with forks on the front loader. This way, blocks are slid onto the chute, then the tractor raises or lowers the chute to off-load blocks into the ice house. Blocks are stacked floor-to-near-ceiling and wall-to-wall by hand. This is the most labor-intensive part of the whole process.
All summer, tourists are greeted with a wheelbarrow-delivered fresh ice block to chill their beverages as needed, much to their amusement, no doubt. Sitting on a dock in July with a lake-ice-chilled gin & tonic, it’s hard to imagine trucks and other heavy equipment just a few months earlier working out on the surface of the lake just a few hundred feet away, dressed in many layers, working hard to keep a tradition alive. I love that they keep this up, and I don’t see it changing any time soon. Some warmer winters of late have forced the operation into a smaller cove elsewhere on the lake - where the ice forms earlier and more reliably. I’ve heard they tried putting small refrigerators in some of the cabins, but the guests didn’t want them; they favored the nostalgia of the icebox, so long as the camp was willing to continue stocking it with lake ice, and so the tradition persists.
Eric Morse, a employee of the camp, made a great video of this, you can see it here: ( link in case of kinja )
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"smobgirl" (smobgirl)
02/21/2017 at 10:01, STARS: 2
That was really neat! Thanks for sharing.
"CB" (jrcb)
02/21/2017 at 10:22, STARS: 1
Another job shamelessly stolen by the machines.
Excellent post.
"functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
02/21/2017 at 10:28, STARS: 0
Thanks! There’s actually a whole book about the ice trade back when it became a thing... I haven’t read it yet but it’s on my list. Crazy stuff like putting New England ice in sailing ships and taking it as far as India. WTF? Pretty interesting though.
"AfromanGTO" (afromangto)
02/21/2017 at 10:31, STARS: 1
This is very interesting. So they push the ice to the channel where the truck winches the ice up. Where was there blocks of ice sitting on the ice, instead of being pushed in the channel? Was that ice dirty or something?
"functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
02/21/2017 at 10:35, STARS: 1
There’s actually a winch on the platform, then the blocks are pushed by hand onto the truck.
The blocks sitting around are one of a few things. Some are broken or damaged, others are remnants of cutting out the channel itself - so they’re different sizes. They leave them out to mark the locations of the open water because if it snows even an inch overnight, suddenly you can’t tell where the thin ice would be.
"benjrblant" (benjblant)
02/21/2017 at 10:37, STARS: 0
I’ve got some friends that used to be camp counselors at RDC. Got to see the little dugout shed where the ice is kept, pretty nifty.
"functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
02/21/2017 at 10:40, STARS: 1
Haha, no kidding. Yeah, I’m always amazed the ice lasts all summer. But it’s a huge mass of cold in there... I gave boat tours on the lake for a few years and some people really struggled to understand this process. Starting with “wait, you drive TRUCKS out here?”
It’s a pretty fun place, although I’ve never stayed there. Been to one or two parties though...
"Urambo Tauro" (urambotauro)
02/21/2017 at 10:41, STARS: 1
Neat! That ice looks heavy. No doubt they’re only loading one layer of blocks onto the truck per trip.
"AfromanGTO" (afromangto)
02/21/2017 at 10:42, STARS: 0
Ok that makes sense. You don’t want anyone or any equipment going into the water.
"benjrblant" (benjblant)
02/21/2017 at 10:44, STARS: 1
My fiance grew up in the town nearby, always a treat to visit central NH.
"functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
02/21/2017 at 10:47, STARS: 1
Yeah, they’re about 120 - 150lbs each. I think they fit 20 blocks in each truck load, so 2,400 - 3,000 lbs total? They ran two trucks to keep things moving, but clearly the slowest part was stacking them neatly in the ice house.
"functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
02/21/2017 at 10:51, STARS: 1
In particular, lots of people go out on the lake for other reasons, including snowmobiles. Those who might have no idea there was an ice harvest operation going on during the week could be unpleasantly surprised...
"Chuckles" (chucklesw37)
02/21/2017 at 11:15, STARS: 1
Very interesting and informative post. It’s nice to see that the tradition lives on. I have to ask though: do people just use the ice cooled boxes to cool their drinks, or are they actually putting cubes of lake ice into their drinks? It made me start thinking about water quality a lot.
"carzcarzcarz" (carzcarzcarz)
02/21/2017 at 11:24, STARS: 0
Wow, that is very “cool”, glad to see this is still done. Thank you for sharing the experience, I’m glad you took your son and exposed him to this tradition.
"functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
02/21/2017 at 11:38, STARS: 0
Thanks for the compliment!
To answer your question, both actually. The water here is very clean. I wouldn’t quite recommend drinking large volumes of it mid-summer necessarily, but certainly some ice cubes would be fine. I’ve probably consumed many gallons of it over the years.
"functionoverfashion" (functionoverfashion)
02/21/2017 at 11:40, STARS: 0
Yeah, thanks! I haven’t been in a long time because it happens on relatively short notice, and tends to be during the week and of course I am usually at work. They’ve started using social media a lot more, which helps get the word out if you’re interested in seeing it.
"carzcarzcarz" (carzcarzcarz)
02/21/2017 at 13:48, STARS: 1
Thanks, but I’m not anywhere close (Texas) to being able to see something like this take place. Hell I was happy enough to witness some autocross action on a frozen lake a couple of weeks ago when I was in Colorado for a ski trip.