A cube off the old block

The staff of the Hanford Mills Museum cuts ice blocks in preparation for Saturday's Ice Harvest Festival. Image from the Hanford Mills Facebook page.

Ice used to be a crop in the days before refrigeration, and at the Hanford Mills Museum in East Meredith, it still is. On Saturday, the museum is hosting its annual Ice Harvest Festival, where visitors can grab a vintage saw, wrest blocks of ice out of a pond, and then haul them to an ice house for storage long into the spring and summer.

This year's festival is stuffed with food, outdoor fire pits, hockey demonstrations, and the ice-carving stylings of the SUNY Delhi Hospitality Center's Ice Team. For more info, see the calendar entry in our Catskills Event Calendar.