The Hard Way to Make an Ice Cube-

As the year ends and we still have no snow in the Pioneer Valley (a situation that may be about to change) I thought we'd crank up the Wayback Machine today with an albumen print from my own collection-

A pencil notation on the back of the mounting identifies this as the Boston Ice Company's ice house in Lake Village, New Hampshire, probably around the turn of the century. If you look closely to the left side of the picture you can see that they were still building the shed there even as they were loading ice blocks via the conveyor apparatus on the right. This detail shows the men near the foot of the loading machinery-

Makes me want a cup of hot cocoa just looking at it!