Posted by Alex Forbes on June 17, 2005 at 02:29:48 from 24.182.30.158 user Pitsligo.
In Reply to: Re: New to S & W - milk - Refrigeration posted by ponspunt on June 15, 2005 at 10:36:55:
I noticed some uncertainty about how the ice, probably brought around to Beckfoot daily by the ice man, was produced. I know back home in Maine, it was cut from ponds in the winter, in great blocks, and stored in special icehouses. Each layer of ice blocks would be packed in sawdust (as insulation). The walls of the icehouse, and the gap left between the ice and the walls, would be packed with sawdust as well. You can tell the icehouses by the small doors above the main, barn-like doors, where the ice blocks were fitted in right up to the rafters. Less space means less air circulation and less melting of the ice during the warm months.
In the house I grew up in, we no longer used a true icebox --it had been replaced by a propane refrigerator-- and so the icehouse, out in a shady corner of woods about 100' from the house, had been converted to a coal shed. Its walls were still packed with sawdust, though.
As for getting unpasteurized milk in the USA, yes, it's available from specially certified dairies, but it's tough to find and priced appropriately to the specialty item it has become.
Would powdered milk have been available to Ss, As, and Ds? Not a good substitute for the real thing, of course, but awfully handy. And doesn't Titty, in WDMTGTS, spike open a tin of condensed milk for Sinbad?
Alex