ICE HARVESTING
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Coatesville Record; 1/06/1939
Ice Harvest of Yesteryear is Something To Be Remembered
(by Uncle Jim)
"Now in the good old days---"
If the old-timer is blessed by an appreciative audience, he uses this opening wedge to drift into a discussion of things as they used to be.
Usually the scoffing younger generations don't hesitate to profess their unbelief.
But when many Chester county farmers swing into a story of the winters of former years, especially when they
fortify their assertions by a description of the ice industry of a quarter of a century ago, it might be wise to listen carefully. The old ice harvesters really have a story to tell.
The time is 1910. The scene, the Hibernia ice dams on the Colonel Franklin Swayne estate, a few miles north of Wagontown.
Over the 22-acre surface of the lower dam scores of men are busy. To the left plowmen are working up and down the pond's surface marking off squares of ice. The plow, composed of a number of spikes in the form of a wedge, is drawn by a horse and cuts a groove in the ice about two inches deep. Like the corn planter, the old ice plow had an arm extending on one side making a line on the ice where the next groove was to be cut.
After a channel has been cut in the ice leading from the loading platform to different parts of the pond, "floaters" men working on boats resembling barges, move along the jagged edges of the ice formation, breaking off long cakes and transporting them back to the loading platform.
There the cakes are "barred off," broken up into individual cakes as marked off on the surface by the plow, and sent up the chain-driven loading belt to the top of a chute leading into the ice house. As the ice cakes slip down the chute into the house, planers
scrape of the accumulation of direct and snow from the top of the cake and send it spinning into the storage houses clean and square-edged.
Within the ice houses crews of men skilfully distribute those cakes of ice to various parts of the building and stack them in high tiers. At the end of the day sawdust and straw are spread over the ice to help preserve it until the selling season starts late in the spring.
Such was the apparently simple task of removing ice from the Hibernia dams for use in Wilmington months later.
But the process naturally had its hazardous as well as its humorous angles.
Crews harvesting the ice were for a large part made up of farmers from the neighborhood. Additional help, however, was necessary and these men were usually Irishmen, whose ready wit and good-nature were ever a source of fun.
Israel Berry, at one time "pond boss," at Hibernia, and Walter Mowday, both of near Cedar Knoll, and veterans of the ice dams, emphasize the fact that ice harvesting was a feverish activity.
When the ice was ready it had to be cut and put away as soon as possible.
Ice was "ripe" for harvest when it was at least eight inches thick and most satisfactory when it was fourteen to sixteen inches. The all-time record for the ice at Hibernia was twenty-eight inches.
Believe it or not, the season for cutting eight inch ice from the Hibernia dams usually began at Christmas time. From that time forward hundreds of men were kept steadily employed storing the ice in the huge houses, some of which contained 15,000 tons of ice.
It was the duty of the "pond boss," to have the ice marked off and everything in readiness for the crew by six or seven in the morning. The work day usually continued until six or seven at night, but frequently until much later. Berry and Mowday recall that on many occasions they worked until midnight and often all night long.
That it was a colorful sight is borne out by the fact that many persons traveled to the dams to watch the ice cutters. The rumble of the freezing ice, the crash of colliding ice cakes, the many lanterns placed over the surface of the pond, the ringing voices of the Irish "tenors" and the resounding boom of negro bosses combined with the shouts of busy men and neigh of horses, must have made it an interesting sight.
Although he worked on the Hibernia dams for a number of years, Berry did not have a fatal accident.
Men and horses frequently fell into the icy water.
Those unfortunate men who slipped off the ice were given a drink of whiskey and sent home to recover.
Always about a horse's neck a rope was attached with a slip-knot at the horse's throat. When the animal fell into the water the rope was jerked, the knot tightened. Unable to breathe, the horse ceased to struggle, lay on its side in the water, and then could easily be pulled up on the ice. No other method of bringing the horses to safety was successful.
The rope was immediately loosened, of course, and, covered with blankets, the animal was walked for an hour until all dangers of a chill had passed.
Such occurrences were numerous. Berry remembers a sorrel horse which fell into
the water four times in one day.
For most of the men whiskey was the great comforting spirit.
On pay days, a glass of whiskey was offered as each man received his envelope. Out on the pond the men often insisted that they must be encouraged by the presence of a gallon somewhere near.
Berry reports the Irish had a singular preventive for colds. Lanterns, of course, were used a great deal on the
dams, and when one of the Irishmen felt a cold developing, he would drink the coal oil from the lanterns.
Men whose homes were not in the vicinity lived in bunk houses and were served meals in huge dining halls.
Heavily wrapped, hands protected by home-made mittens and feet covered by burlap bags, the men toiled many weary hours to harvest the natural ice to make
more comfortable months later some family many miles away. The men received 15 cents an hour and the boys who were used to lead horse and do odd chores received 10 and 12 cents.
But today ice fourteen inches thick seems unbelievable, for the winters have changed. Whether it is the sun which had slipped farther south during the winter or whether the gulf stream has moved closer to the coastline of the United States doesn't worry about the older folks much for they known they still have a real story when they talk about the old ice harvests on the Hibernia and Icedale dams.
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