We had Amish move into a home next door about ten years ago, and so they are only about 1/2 mile away. They had been saving up their money for a preconstructed ice house, which came in December.
With some 2x4 boards and a lot of ratchet straps and stakes (to hold it to the ground), it became this:
Now to fill it with ice. At first, they tried it from ice they made in a 1 foot deep area they filled with water. But then their water hose froze. We told them to come down and cut ice from our pond, at it’s been zero many days. The ice is 8" thick. Here are some hazy shots of them doing it with a chain saw and a sled to haul it back to their house.
In the picture below, they are making the cuts with a chain saw and a 2x4 board to keep it straight.
Then they cut 20 ft x 2 ft slabs and pull it on to the frozen ice.
Then they cut the ice into 2 ft squares, put it on a sled, and haul it back to the ice house. Just two men doing it all, hauling ice chunks back to their house across a field on a sled.
It certainly does explain why you rarely see an Amish man who is overweight, as they have so much physical labor to do. They then stack the ice in the ice house, and use from it all year until it is cold again. They’ll remove a 24 x 24 x 8″ chunk of ice, drop it into a non-working chest freezer, and keep the food on top of it. As it slowly melts, a drain in the freezer allows the defrost water to leave down a floor drain in their house.
I’m not sure if I want to be Amish, but I certainly enjoy having them as neighbors!
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