Before you had propane fridges, you would have to go with your father to cut ice on the lake. You would auger a hole and then use a 6 foot falling saw to cut out the blocks. Roughly 28 by 14 and the going thickness of the lakes' ice cover. You need 16 inches thickness. Gauge what time of winter to cut your ice. Early or late winter. Ice can be brittle or soft and have varying ice thickness.
You would haul these blocks to your icehouse and place them inside on a base cover of dry saw dust that you obtained from the local saw mill. Stack your blocks in consecutive layers with a bit of sawdust between the layers but leave the adjoining blocks clean. Once all your blocks have been stacked, you would fill in the three foot sides with dry sawdust and cap the top.

Going into spring and summer you would slowly access your cache of ice. You would break a block free from the layer with a heavy pinch bar with a hard blow along one edge of a block joint ( winter storage fuses the blocks slightly ). Get a pair of ice tongs, grasp the block on one end and drag it outside to a cleaning sled. Take either a double handled falling saw or bow saw and saw it in half. Depending on what you want to store on ice in the top compartment of your ice box fridge, would dictate the size to cut your block. You now wash your block of ice to get rid of the sawdust. You don't want the drainage of your ice box fridge to plug up.
Now you can use your ice tongs to cart your ice to the cabin and place it into your ice box fridge.
Be careful, ice is brittle and there is a special way to carry ice using ice tongs. If it gives way while your placing the block into the fridge ice box compartment, get your toes out of the way ....fast!

There you go. Get some kindling, some Birch bark and start your wood stove. Put the kettle on the boil for a cup of joe. Open the top stove plate and get some bread into a toaster frame and start making that toast.

Wow! What a stimulus to the senses, those old-fashioned aromas of bygone days. Simpler but not for the lazy.

Now where is that fry pan, I know I got some trout on ice.

regards,