29S THE FARMERY. [Chap, in 



apply hot water with cloths to tlie sides of the tin eontaiuers, which enables 

 me to empty out the blocks of ice. 



" A cube of ice of four feet is all I need. No separate building need be 

 erected to keep it in. The barn, the wood-house, or the tool-house can 

 furnish an an)ple corner. The conditions of its safe keeping arc — the walls 

 of a building around, and two feet of com]iact straw on every side of the 

 gelid mass. In packing, I lay loose boards on a bed of straw, and on this 

 ])latform I lay the ice. I take cure to expose the ice to the lowest tempera- 

 ture of the year, and lay it up in the coldest state. If every alternate block 

 of ice is inverted, the mass is thereby made compact; if not, there will be 

 a little space open at the bottom between the respective blocks. "When the 

 culie is complete, cover the whole M^ith straw. This work can be etiected 

 with milk pans or other vessels, and if straw or ice be carefully filled into 

 the intervals in packing it will answer a good purpose, though square pans 

 are preferable. I use snow for the sake of hastening the process of freezing. 

 The pans are flared a little toward the top to facilitate turning out." 



This excellent plan should be carefully heeded by all the dwellers upon 

 prairies, and by a great many other pe'ople. 



31(3. How to Carry Ice to the Field.— Lucius Beach, of Port Huron, Mich., 

 says : " Many farmers do not put up ice from the supposed difliculty of using 

 it on the farm away from the house. I have used ice-water for constant 

 drink two summers on my farm. I happened to carry water with ice in it 

 into the field in a six-quart tin jmil with a cover to it. We used the water, 

 and the ice was left in the jiail about six hours in a hot day, and some of it 

 still remained. I then procured a twelve-quart tin pail with cover, put 

 in a large piece of ice, took a jug of water info the field, and turned it on 

 to the ice as we wanted to use it. In this way it will last from six to ten 

 hours for the use of six men, and is a luxury indeed." 



317. How to Keep Ice in SunHDer. — If you have no ice-house, and buy ice, 

 or even if you have an ice-house, and do not want to open it except at even- 

 ing or morning, or if it is inconvenient to the house, and you wish to have 

 ice always handy, this is how you can do it. Have a bushel of clean, dry 

 sawdust, ])ut a peck of it in the bottom of a tight barrel, having one hole 

 for drainage, then put in a layer of lumps of ice and another peck of saw- 

 dust, and so on, covering the top tightly with sawdust, and over all a folded 

 blanket. Do not let the ice touch the staves, and do not set the barrel in a 

 warm place, and you will have ice all day, with scarcely any perceptible 

 waste. Provide sawdust enough, -so that you can shift the wet for dry every 

 day. This is a much better plan than wrapping ice in a blanket or keeping 

 it in a refrigerator, because the best of these useful articles of household fur- 

 niture do not preserve ice, but rather waste it, and in so doing preserve the 

 food placed in them. 



318. Refrii^erators.— No family can afford to keep house without a re- 

 frigerator — a food-preserver. "We do not mean an ice-box, which, like the 

 one above described, will keep ice, but nothing else — that is, not to any ad- 



