With today’s warm weather: well into the 70’s and dry, following a mild winter; it is with some amusement that I found this snippet from 1900: On January 3rd, the Greenwoods Ice Company began cutting ice. They finished the yearly harvest on March 22nd. Their total for the year was 27,000 Tons of ice. Ice could be harvested once the ice was between 7 and half to 8 inches in thickness. The Greenwoods company ‘owned’ the ice taken from Greenwoods pond, the 2 mile long stretch of water backed up on the West Branch of the Farmington above the center of town by the Greenwoods dam.
In addition to selling ice, they also used about 500 tons of it themselves. This was probably sold to company employees, since their operations (textiles) would not have required ice. The ice was shipped out of town by the railroad, headed for Hartford.
New Hartford Historical Society 