The Ice Pond

The Ice Pond. . In the days before modern refrigeration, ice was used to protect farm produce from spoilage. Chilling milk, meat, eggs, and other agricultural products kept them fresh when being shipped by rail, which was a principal means of getting produce to market from the mid-19th through the early 20th centuries., This pond is not a natural landscape feature, but was man-made sometime before 1859. It was created by building a dam and digging out an area of Spruce Brook; water backed up behind the dam to create the pond. In the winter, when the pond froze, the ice was harvested by being cut into blocks, which were stored in an ice house. Salt hay was used as an insulator., Ice harvesting was hard work, requiring specialized saws, ploughs, and other tools. A standard 22- by 32-inch cake of ice weighed 23 pounds for every inch of thickness. So, a 10-inch cake would weigh about 230 pomnds. Since ice would be lost to melting over the summer, large quantities had to be cut to last through the year. There are no known photographs of ice harvesting on the Jay farm. These photographs were taken in New England, and illustrate the same process that was once used here., [photos:] , Spruce Brook, the water source for this pond, flows north through the eastern edge of the Brick Lot. There were originally three ponds along the brook; all three are circled on the map. The two ponds to the south have since stilted in: this pond is the one to the northeast., Marking ice into squares with horse drawn ploughs., The pond looks almost unrecognizable in this 1910 photograph, given the growth of trees and brush in this area since then. The dam and the pond were widened later in the 20th century. During the summer, the pond was home to water fowl., Ice harvesting photographs reproduced from About The Farm (J.P. Whipple Co. Boston, 1910.) Bodenstein tool images courtesy of Franklin Roosevelt Presidential Library.), Separating long slabs of the ice saws, and the use of the pike to move the ice across the water.