I have posted this information under the “Survival Energy Harvesting” category because keeping stuff cold requires energy. Whether that is electrical energy to run a compressor for refrigeration or whether that is manual energy to harvest ice is a mute point. I have dealt with this topic in my “Survival Fish Harvesting” book so instead of reinventing the wheel I am going to simply reprint what I wrote there.
I am currently looking around online for a good set of plants for an ice house and also for root cellar construction. When I finally select a couple I will post links at the bottom of this post. I hope you enjoy the info below and this peek inside my book.
Freezing was not much of an option before artificial refrigeration, at least in temperate climates, though ice houses/wells were a common way of extending the “best before date” of food. Refrigeration as a method of preserving food dates back to at least the ancient Roman and Chinese empires. Caves in which underground water freezes through the winter and then lasts well into the spring and summer were no doubt used by peoples in prehistoric times. In my younger days I remember discovering caves along the bank of a creek my friends and I used to explore. Ice would last in the cave, which had a low west facing entrance, well into the late spring.
Refrigeration will keep fresh fish safe to eat for 3-4 days, if the storage temperature is 400 F. Shellfish is more like 12 – 24 hours if fresh and twice that if cooked. Freezing extends lean fish like cod or flounder for 6 months and fatty fish like salmon two months. Modern processing methods involving vacuum packing will keep fish good for up to two years.
Before electrically powered refrigerators, people cut thick blocks of ice in the winter time and transported the
m to insulated warehouses where the blocks were stacked and then further covered with straw. I remember the “ice man” delivering blocks of ice to our house in St. Catharines, Ontario, when I was very young. The ice block fit into a compartment in the “ice box” and kept milk and food cool as it slowly melted. Every few days the ice man would be back with another block.
On my grandfather’s farm in Saskatchewan they had an “Ice house.” This was a small building with thick walls filled with sawdust that straddled a well that might have been 12 feet deep. There was trap door in the middle of the floor that opened to reveal the well. In the wooden sill around the opening various hooks were set.
In the winter time they would cut blocks of ice (I don’t know where they came from…probably a pond on the farm) and fill the well about half full. In the warm weather, milk pails, hams, chunks of beef, and mesh bags full of whatever you wanted to keep cold would be secured to ropes and then hung from the hooks in the well. I have no clue what the temperature was, but I have no doubt it was cold. This technique has been used for a long time. A cuneiform tablet from c. 1780 BC records the construction of an icehouse in the northern Mesopotamian town of Terqa (Wikipedia). That’s almost 4,000 years ago.
Links to Reference Material
An Examination of an Ice House at Old Town Plantation