Iceboxes, root cellars or spring houses built near cool running water.
My grandparents lived just west of Valley Forge. They had a cellar under an old smokehouse. They would cut ice from the Schuylkill River in winter and stash it in straw in that cellar, and the ice would keep well into the summer.
This film covers it at about the 6:23 mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti5bo3OxZ2c
My brother lives in a house built on British territory, in the US, in the very early 1700s. It came with (he hasn’t lived there that entire time) a 15’ deep, 400 sq ft stone-lined pit. Before electricity, they would harvest ice off the river behind the house and deposit it in the ice pit. (This was done in the winter) So, they had year-round refrigeration.
Ice Houses, Root cellars, caves or tunnels.
For the vast majority of humankind, they were not able to keep food cold, except during winter. The old saw: Everyone gets their fair share of ice - The rich in summer, the poor in winter. Meat was eaten fresh, or cured in some manner - salt, smoke, jerky, etc. Produce was eaten in season, or canned. No fresh raspberries in January from Chile.
2 stories both involving my dad who was born in VERY rural Tennessee in 1937. Just down the street from the log cabin that he was born in, was a small store. This store was built OVER a natural spring. And the store had a trapdoor to a small area that they stored milk and other perishable items in the water stream. This kept them from spoiling as the water from this spring was ALWAYS cold. As in “brain freeze” if you drank it too fast on a hot day kinda cold.
At the ripe old age of 15 when my step-grandfather abandoned my grandmother, my dad quit school and got a job delivering ice blocks to people who had “ice boxes”.
The "Death Valley Days" episode titled "California's First Ice Man" (Season 4, Episode 7, aired December 12, 1955) depicts the story of Peter Jeffries, who arrives in Sacramento during the California Gold Rush era to revive his family's fortune. He discovers that Phineas Colby has financially monopolized the town. While courting Laura Colby, Peter realizes that ice, not gold, could be the key to his success.
The episode portrays his efforts to establish a business transporting ice from the mountains to the city, overcoming skepticism and logistical challenges. This venture proves successful, opening new opportunities for pioneers and shaping California's history. The story highlights the ingenuity of early entrepreneurs in the ice trade, reflecting the historical context of ice being shipped to California in the 1850s for preservation and cooling needs.
A great uncle, who was born in 1878 (died in 1976), talked about having ice all through the summer from a local ice house. I saw a picture of the building in his local historical society. Looks like quite solid construction. I looked like some sort of straw was the insulating material.
As a side note, this uncle and his brother had jobs as 10-12 year old kids, delivering dynamite in their family wagon, to local farmers (for rock/tree stump removal) from the local Dupont factory/warehouse.
My GGM cooled food in a nearby stream.
Mom called the refrigerator the Ice Box, so us 7 kids did too.
And they used other food preservation methods to store their food.
More ICE please.........
😁😁😁😁
And in other places... Ancient physics at work to make Ice in the desert where it never freezes not even in winter...
The Persian ice house
Everyone can appreciate the cooling effect of a cold, iced drink on a hot summer day. How did people in hot climates even survive before there was electricity and freezers? Surely it would have been impossible to have ice at least? Well, as a matter of fact it wasn’t, and people in the deserts of Iran were enjoying frozen drinks well before electricity, thanks to the Persian ice house. Although ice houses that store natural ice and snow harvested during the winter have existed in many countries, the Persian ice house is unique because of the way the ice was made in the desert at temperatures above freezing.
Even though winter nights can be very cold in the deserts of Iran, temperatures rarely drop below freezing. But ice could be made even at temperatures just above freezing, thanks to a phenomenon known as night sky radiation or radiative cooling.
Outside the ice house there were shallow pools or channels, and these were shaded with walls during the day so that they remained as cool as possible. These pools were then filled with water on clear winter nights, and how much water was poured in the pool varied depending on how cold it was. The water came from the qanat system of underground aqueducts that brought water into the desert cities.
https://fieldstudyoftheworld.com/persian-ice-house-how-make-ice-desert/
And ancient Zeer Pot evaporative Refrigerators
A clay pot is filled with damp sand, which contains another smaller pot, in which food is placed. The evaporation of the water that moistens the sand contained in the cavity between the two pots produces cooling, bringing the heat of the inner vessel outwards.
Then it is covered with a wet cloth; the sand is kept humid by pouring water.
Evaporative cooling= temperature + humidity + air speed.
By maintaining a constant flow of fresh air, the temperature of the internal pot can reach up to 4.4 °C, a temperature at which mesophilic bacteria harmful to food significantly slow their growth.
This technique was already used in Ancient Egypt around 2500 B.C. In the 90s, in the rural areas of northern Nigeria, Mohamed Bah Abba (1964-2010), university professor, resumed this technology and spread it. The system has been successfully adopted in sub-Saharan Africa, has allowed to reduce diseases related to poor food storage and has granted several economic benefits to populations.
https://www.tecnosoft.eu/en/news/ZEER_desert_refrigerator/
My grandparents had this 78 rpm.
My father told me when he was a small child, the family farmhouse had a well in the kitchen with a hand crank hooked onto a caged platform. All the food items such as butter and meat were lowered down just above the water to be kept cold.
People never read LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRARIE OR LITTLE BRITCHES series? Ir CARLS EMERY book on homesteading?
In my dad’s hometown, there’s 3 ponds named ‘Ice Pond 1’, ‘Ice Pond 2’ and ‘Ice Pond 3’. It was used by an Icehouse. The Icehouse finally went out of business 4 years ago. In business, but selling beer from the springs that made the ponds.
When I was a kid, we used to chase the ice truck down the street until the guy dropped a big chunk off the back so we could smash it and suck on it....there was a place called the “Ice House” where they packed ice from special ponds where they would let it freeze and cut/pack it between straw insulation to help keep it frozen. This was mid 50s in Rochester, NY and a few folks still had iceboxes instead of refrigerators.