During my early teenage years on the farm, the neighboring farm had a huge woods. The neighbors wanted to add on to their hay storage shed and decided to cut some trees and have them sawed into planks for the addition. They worked on cutting the timber in early Fall and dragged the logs to an area next to their barn. Then, they hired one of those portable saw mill guys to come. The guy set up and the sawing started--and all of the saw dust was dumped into a pile. I remember that it was very cold and a storm hit and everything stopped for a few days. When the sawing started again, the saw dust pile was covered with snow. They dumped the new saw dust on top of the original pile--and the snow. The following summer, during my school summer vacation, the neighbors cleaned up the saw dust pile and inside, there was frozen saw dust and snow. It was probably in July. Then, all of the old timers told about storing ice in saw dust before some smart person invented the refrigerator.

Ron

Mother Nature is making ice here now. Calling for a high temp of 20*F today, and a low of 2* tonight. It's minus 5* at Mount Storm, WV now.

Years ago my Dad had an idea for making ice. Dad was thinking about running a garden hose out an upstairs window and tie off the other end to a tree limb, up 20 feet or so above ground. Turn the faucet on and let it drip, drip, drip. On a really cold night, you could probably freeze a pencil-sized stream.

Dad was thinking about covering it up with plastic and then sawdust.

I don't remember what the town charges me per 1,000 gallons of water, it's not really that much. But figure 1,000 gallons of water would make a sizable chunk of ice. More or less a waste of water, but it'd be interesting. Just to see how long it would last.