Boys and girls like ice-cream the year round and yet many of us do without it in the winter time because the iceman does not come around. Sometimes you may have thought when you broke the ice in the watering trough that there was nearly enough to make a freezer of ice-cream.
Did it not occur to you that you could make home-made ice, supply the refrigerator in coldest weather, and make ice-cream whenever you want it? All you need is the cold weather and a heavy tin pail. Fill the pail with clean water some clear, cold night and stand it where it will get the greatest exposure. If the mercury is a little below zero it will freeze a coat of ice two or more inches thick on top and sides of the pail. Turn the pail upside down on a bench and turn enough hot water over it to loosen the pail; then take it off. The ice on the bottom will be thin. Break this and dip out all of the water, but about two inches. This will freeze very quickly in cold weather and you can put in more. Keep filling it up until your ice pail is solid. It is then ready for the refrigerator.
From making one block of ice in a heavy tin pail it is an easy step to making a winter supply to store in sawdust where the sun cannot melt it during a thaw and where you can get at it when needed. From this the logical conclusion is that a man and his boys could make a supply of ice for both summer and winter by following the same tactics.
How well I remember the hardships of the ice harvesters of my home neighbourhood. The ice had to be cut in the river three miles away, and hauled up a bad hill. If the roads were good the ice was bad as a rule. Good sleighing meant ice covered with snow. There was always anxiety for fear we should not get a supply, and often the houses were filled with thin cakes, for fear the cold weather was over for the year. Then the hauling and the cutting in the bitter weather was bad for men and teams. The ice was river ice and we knew it was unsafe.
A writer in Country Life describes how he made his supply of home-made ice. He first had a tinner make heavy tin boxes of a size convenient to handle. He had them made an inch smaller at the bottom than at the top and the top was bound over a heavy wire. When the cold weather came the clean pans were filled from the well. The cakes were turned out of the pans next day and dipped and filled just as described above, as solid cakes formed. These were packed in the ice house for the summer's supply as fast as made. The cost was less in time and cash, than putting up "wild ice," even including the cost of pans, which can, of course, be used over and over, year after year.
CUTTING SEED POTATOES
For cutting seed potatoes
Cutting seed potatoes is a job that most boys and girls dislike and no wonder. It takes so long, is so dirty, your thumb gets so scored and even cut seriously. But most fathers want the potatoes cut before planting and who is to do it but the boys and girls? Two ingenious boys invented a contraption which decreased the time and labour to a minimum and almost made the job a pleasure. This description of their potato cutter is adapted from Farming for April, nineteen hundred and seven. A dry goods box holding several bushels was fitted with four strong legs, just long enough to lift the box to a height convenient to sit by. At the bottom of one side of the box a board was removed to let the potatoes roll out on a shelf attached beneath the opening. The shelf should have a rim two or three inches high and there should be a crack where shelf and box come together to let the dust sift down. The knife is driven into the end of a short piece of plank and held with fence staples. The boy sits on the plank. The potato is pushed forward against the sharp blade and the pieces drop into the basket. A man can cut forty bushels of potatoes in a day with this outfit.
The work ought to be done out under a tree, and if the boys want to wear gloves to keep their hands clean and smooth for more delicate work, I should encourage them to do so.