It's been a long, cold winter.
It would have been a good one for "harvesting ice" - if ice were still harvested.

For many years, it was a routine annual activity for Leland fishermen.
“Ice Harvest Is Under Way” was the headline above a page one story in the Enterprise’s edition of Jan. 6, 1927.

“The annual ice harvest got underway this week, three weeks before the time of starting last year,” the newspaper reported. “This was due to the unusually early freezing of Lake Leelanau. The ice is of an ideal thickness, about fourteen inches.”

The Enterprise added that the “ice crop” would be larger than that of previous years, since there were two new icehouses to fill.

“Plowing and marking and preparing the buildings took up the time Monday, and the work was begun in earnest Tuesday morning. About 2,300 cakes were packed that day, chiefly for the shanties south of the river.”

On Wednesday, “in spite of stormy weather all day, more than 2,000 cakes were put up in the icehouses north of the river.” The filling of those icehouses was completed the following day.

It was reported that Edward Wichern of Good Harbor “marked” the ice and Henry Steffens did the sawing and splitting. “Gordon Carlson and Roy Buckler, loaders, complete the lake crew,” it was reported.

In the final years of the ice harvest trucks were used, but in 1927, horses were still employed for the task.

“There are four teams hauling,” the newspaper reported. “Jas. Anderson, Jr., Wm. Carlson, and Willard and Harold Alpers are the teamsters.”

And, in what appears to be an effort to make sure no workers went unheralded, the Enterprise reported “among the various icehouse crews are included, Wm. Buckler, George Cook, Oscar Price, Roy Gibson, Martin Hoeft, George Steffens, Eli Firestone, Pete Nelson, Claude Kaapke, Roy Firestone, Otto Light, Erhardt Peters, Gerald Pheatt, Norman Price, George Buckler.”

Peters, who was a very young man at the time, later became well known for his many pictures of “Fishtown.” In about 1940, he moved to Ludington, where he worked on the Pere Marquette carferries.

Other names will be recognized as those of doughty commercial fishermen.

After the top of the ice was cleared of snow (if necessary), the “marker” was put to use.

The “marker” was an instrument that cut shallow grooves in the ice, marking it off into large blocks or “cakes.” A “plow” had a series of knives on a steel bar to deepen the grooves until the blocks could be sawn or pried apart and removed from the lake.

Ramps were used to haul the cakes onto wagons or trucks, which were used to transport the ice to the icehouses, where it would be packed in sawdust.

About the time horses had been replaced by trucks for the local ice harvest, power saws were used to speed things up and reduce the manual labor.

Other northern Michigan communities, like Fife Lake, harvested more ice. But in those instances direct rail connections gave access to larger markets for this product.

Ice harvesting could actually be a big business, and by the middle of the 19th century, fast clipper ships carried ice, packed in sawdust, as far south as Florida from Northern states.

Ice was first shipped from New York City to Charleston, S.C., in 1799.

In Michigan, the winter ice was attacked with the same vigor that the lumberjacks displayed in the woods. And this “crop,” unlike the trees, would replenish itself in less than a year’s time.

At Leland, the harvest became a local tradition and showed that Old Man Winter, while sometimes forcing commercial fishing to a halt, could also provide something useful for those who chose to wrest a living from the waters of the big lake.