Creamery & Ice House

Creamery and Ice House. Reynolds Homestead. , To keep perishables cool during the hot summer months chunks of ice were cut from frozen creeks and ponds in winter, and stored in the ice house. The building was constructed by digging a cavity, lining it with bricks, adding sturdy walls, a door and a roof. Packing ice into a large block slows melting. By further insulating the ice with straw or sawdust, it would remain frozen for many months often until the following winter., Before specialized ice harvesting tools were invented, simple tools such as axes, saws, and scrapers made by local blacksmiths and carpenters were used by farmers. During the 1800sspecialized tools were invented, and eventually there were about 60 different tools used in the ice harvest for preparing the ice surface, cutting the blocks, poling blocks to the shore, breaking blocks, and getting the ice into storage., Creameries, or milk houses, were used to store dairy products and for cheese and butter production. Built with a sunken floor to keep stored milk products cool, milk houses had slatted openings to allow warm air to escape. Sanitation was critical to the production of dairy products. Milk houses and all equipment (buckets, trays, and milk pans) had to be kept clean. Any spills had to be quickly removed to prevent attracting flies., Milk was first strained to remove any chunks, cow hair or insects, then it was poured into wide shallow pans and left 24 to 48 hours on shelves for the cream to rise. Next the cream was skimmed iwth large flat spoons and stored in salt-glazed pots. This cream could be used to churn butter, while the remaining liquid could be used to produce cheese., Cheese was made by taking the remaining liquid and adding rennet, which causes the milk to separate into solds (curds) and liquids (whey). The curds would be cut, heated (lower temperatures produced softer cheese, higher temperatures produce firmer cheese), then placed in cheese cloth to cure., Women were primarily responsible for managing the production of dairy products. Pictured at left, is a butter churn used to churn cream into butter, and a butter mold used to pressure butter into squares for storage. Also depicted is a cheese mold on a draining board and a box used to store cheese after it was strained., [Captions:] , Chisels, hooks, saws, sieves, break-off bars and tongs were used in the ice harvest operation., An ice plow (above) with short teeth was used to mark the frozen area in a grid., Ice harvesting was an arduous task. As depicted in the drawing above, long saws and the hooks were used to cut up pre-scored sections of ice. The blocks of ice were then floated to a collection point, grabbed with a hood, and slid on a series of ramps into a wagon to be transported to the ice house. Ice tongs were used to maneuver the ice blocks to stack them tightly in the ice house beteween layers of straw or dust.