SOUTH BRISTOL, Maine — Sunday was the one day a year Thompson Pond gets to preserve its own history, passing the ice harvesting tradition onto the community and the next generation.
"It really has turned into quite the event," Thompson Ice House Harvesting Museum president Ken Lincoln said.
Harvesting ice has been part of Maine's history for 200 years, and the more than three-decades-old annual Thompson Pond ice harvest has been a special way to pass on skills to the next generation.
"Most kids don't know what an icebox is, so they come here. They help harvest the ice. You explain to them why we're doing it, and just hopefully that will keep the interest and it will keep going forever," Lincoln said.
Lincoln said only about 20 to 30 people would participate in the earlier harvests, but he said it has grown to about 600 to 800 people.
"We've had people from England, Ireland, Australia. They said it was on my bucket list, and, 'I wanted to come harvest ice,'" he said.
Sarah Lohman may not have traveled from around the world, but she did make the trip from across the country.
"I came from Las Vegas just for this," she said.
Lohman is a food historian and author who is writing her third book about the history of ice cream.
"If you want to talk about ice cream, you got to talk about ice," she said.
She made the journey to coastal Maine because she said there was no better place for her to learn about harvesting it.
By hand, people cut grooves in the ice, used chisels to prod ice blocks free and push them toward the ice house. By the end of the event, Lincoln was hoping they'd cut more than 500 blocks of ice.
"The kids who are doing this are obsessed. Like, they don't want to give up the tools. It's so incredible," Lohman said. "I did everything today. I did it all. My arms are already sore."
The ice was seven inches thick on Sunday, according to Lincoln, but the warming winters may pose as a problem in the coming winters.
"We should be cutting a foot [to] 14 inches of ice, and we don't get it anymore. We're lucky to get 7 [inches], so that may be the end of this industry. If it keeps warming and we don't get the cold weather, can't cut it," he said.
Lincoln said the ice lasts three times longer than man-made ice, so fisherman will take a block to go out on the water for a few days or hunters will use it when fall comes.