ice harvesting was a much needed chore back when ice boxes were being used, these were before the refrigerators.
I will try not to bore you, but I will relate what my memory remembers;
as a young lad, we lived in a 2 family house, we had a refrigerator, but the elderly couple that lived upstairs had an ice box, even tho
it was inside the house, on the open porch was a small sliding door that the ice man could open and put their block of ice thru the
rear of the ice box. saved him from carrying in the dripping ice thru the house.
he had a big box truck and would park in front of the house, he knew what size block that their box would hold. he would go to the back
of the truck and use a long hook to slide a chuck to him, then take his axe and cut it to size, then use an ice hatchet to trim it to fit the box,
my 2 sisters and I would lean over the fence to watch (hot days) he would then bring us over some ice chips to eat. (to us, that was
a treat)
people would put a square sign in their window that had 4 sizes in pounds of how much ice they needed, such as 10, 20, 30 40 or
whatever was needed, this prevented him from having to climb, sometimes many flight of stars to find out how much you needed.
but talking about ice harvesting, a lot of ice was shipped by train to the big cities, stores needed them for their coolers for meats, etc..
some ice house used canvas and wood shavings to keep the ice from melting.
now you have refrigerators with ice making machines in the home ???