Ice or no ice sometimes means bread or no bread to scores of
families, and it means added or diminished comforts to many more. It
is a crop that takes two or three weeks of rugged winter weather to
grow, and, if the water is very roily or brackish, even longer. It is
seldom worked till it presents seven or eight inches of clear water
ice. Men go out from time to time and examine it, as the farmer goes
out and examines his grain or grass, to see when it will do to cut. If
there comes a deep fall of snow the ice is 'pricked' so as to let the
water up through and form snow ice. A band of fifteen or twenty men,
about a yard apart, each armed with a chisel-bar, and marching in
line, puncture the ice at each step, with a single sharp thrust. To
and fro they go, leaving a belt behind them that presently becomes
saturated with water. But ice, to be of first quality, must grow from
beneath, not from above. It is a crop quite as uncertain as any other.
A good yield every two or three years, as they say of wheat out west,
is about all that can be counted upon. When there is an abundant
harvest, after the ice houses are filled, they stack great quantities
of it, as the farmer stacks his surplus hay.
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