Latest Press Releases / Media Fact Sheet / Media Assistance Request

"Fire and Ice" at Old Sturbridge Village Jan. 26

(Sturbridge, MA) December 31, 2007— Old Sturbridge Village embraces the joys of an old fashioned winter with a “Fire and Ice” celebration on Sat. Jan. 26. Visitors can watch the Mill Pond ice harvested with vintage tools and learn how early New Englanders cut blocks of ice and shipped them around the world before the invention of electrical refrigeration. Afterwards, guests can warm up with hot cider, fireside tales and the magic of Bob Olson at the Bullard Tavern. The ice harvest demos, story telling, songs, puppet shows and hearthside activities will be ongoing throughout the day.

“We take ice for granted today, but before the 1800s, only the rich had access to ice cream and ice cold drinks in the summertime,” notes Deb Friedman, head of interpretation at Old Sturbridge Village. “Harvesting natural ice from lakes and ponds became big business in the 19th century and ice was considered an important agricultural “crop” for New England farmers.”

Ice harvesting historian Dennis Picard of Westfield, Mass. will follow 19th century methods for the OSV ice harvest, making sure the ice is at least 12 inches thick, and that any snow on top is scraped off. The ice is first marked into two-foot squares, and then separated with large-toothed ice saws and “breaker bars” and pikes. Then, it is either floated through a lane of open water or loaded on sleds to be stored in the ice house with straw or sawdust for insulation. By the 1840s, ice was often loaded directly onto rail cars for shipment to the cities.

“With farm fields under snow and mill races frozen, ice harvesting was a great way for young men in New England to make a dollar a day,” Picard notes. “Henry David Thoreau included a wonderfully descriptive chapter on ice harvesting in his famous book, Walden, describing the Irish laborers and their Yankee foremen.”

Picard and historian Tom Kelleher of Old Sturbridge Village are featured in a segment on ice harvesting in the upcoming Nova documentary entitled “Absolute Zero: The Conquest of Cold,” produced by the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), due to air on PBS stations at 8:00 p.m. Sun. January 8 (for details: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/zero).

Picard and Kelleher portray ice harvesting laborers working for 19th century Boston merchant Frederick Tudor, who was dubbed “The Ice King.”

Tudor made New England’s ice harvesting a global business by shipping ice from a Lynn, Mass. pond to the West Indies 1805. His business expanded to include shipments of ice to southern U.S. cities like New Orleans and Charleston, as well as to Cuba, South America, India, China and England, where it was reported that that Queen Victoria purchased Massachusetts ice in the 1840s.

Old Sturbridge Village celebrates New England life in the 1830s and is open 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Tues. – Sun. Admission: $20; seniors $18; children 3-17, $6; children under 3, free. For details: www.osv.org or call 1-800-SEE-1830.