This Amish-owned, electric-powered “ice chest” serves the Grabill, Indiana community for anyone who doesn’t have a fridge at home to have access to ice.
By Kevin Williams
Refrigeration is one area that over the years the Amish have made a lot of allowances. While electricity is still generally frowned upon, in the interest of food safety and storage many Amish settlements now allow solar or gas-powered fridges. This simplifies the food storage process much more for Amish families. Twenty years or more ago most Amish families relied on cool cellars or ice houses to keep food chilled. Amish would cut blocks of ice from frozen ponds in the winter and use them to fill ice houses which would keep food cool or frozen most of the year. To be sure, this is still practiced in many of the most conservative communities (and even some more progressive ones, like Lindsay, Ontario, a more liberal one). Years ago if you didn’t have a cellar some Amish would have to be extra creative and do things like storing food in a cool creek or slicing a big barrel in half, fashioning a lid, and burying the barrel half so that it was in the cool ground. This would at least keep milk from souring for a full day.
SIGH, I refrigerate a lot of stuff. Maybe stuff I am not even supposed to. I love cold food. I’ll stick leftover cake or cookies in the fridge (“but that dries it out” is a common refrain from my wife)….I like my fruit cold: apples, oranges, bananas.
When I was a child and we traveled frequently one of my “worst memories” was of being in Italy (I’m sure this is custom in other countries too) and being served glasses of warm milk for breakfast. Ugh, no thanks. I even like to put jars of peanut butter in the fridge. Anyone else out there refrigerate stuff that maybe shouldn’t be?
4 Comments
brenda
this is interesting to me because it is another thing that was a part of my great grandparents home. in Tuscarawas county there are large black boulders peeking out of the surface of many fields. from these surprisingly easy to carve black boulders the masons in the family carved large rectangular shapes and from these the milk house was formed with a spring and creek flowing through the middle of it. milk, and other dairy, eggs and even some meat were easily stored. this was in place long after the electric co-op was in operation. It was subject to spring cleaning like everything else but there was still a yummy smell from years of use. I am imagining this is similar to what the Amish early refrigeration was like.
Kevin
Interesting, Brenda, thank you for sharing that, wow that would have been so neat to see! I can picture it from your description, but I’d love to see that…I’ve only seen one similar set-up and that was at an Amish home in Virginia…
Nana
I purchased an Amish property and there is a spring house with a trough. They kept all their perishable foods there. The water is surprisingly cold and the spring does not run dry. Of course things like ice cream are not going to be held by a spring house but milk, eggs, watermelon and such do well.
Kevin
Really neat, Nana! What Amish settlement?