Our Refrigerator is 25 Feet Deep

Ice Harvest Tours at Shirley Plantation
Find out how the 25-foot-deep ice pit at Shirley Plantation served as both the refrigerator and freezer for a community of servants, guests and family. Find out how Colonial cooks prepared chilled melons and tomatoes and made ice cream during the muggy tidewater Virginia summers. The answers to all these questions and more await you during Shirley Plantation’s month-long Ice Harvest Interpretation in January of 2012.

From January 1-31, 2012, the Ice Harvest exhibit in the original Colonial Ice House building will feature the story of how ice made it from the farm ponds to the dinner table of the Great House. Guided house tours will include information and first- hand accounts of harvesting, transporting, packing, storing and the many uses of ice at Shirley. Learn about the unusual construction of the Ice Pit and why the walls are narrow at the bottom. Discover the many important roles of ice in food preparation and storage before advent of refrigeration or chemical preservatives. Take a look at the new exhibit panel which reveals what archaeologists found while excavating the floor of the Ice Pit. The new Ice Pit exhibit panel will be installed by January 1, 2012.

There is no additional fee for the Ice Harvest interpretation. Regular admission to Shirley Plantation is $11.00 for adults and $7.50 for youths (6-18), with discounts for AAA members, seniors, and military. Shirley Plantation is open daily from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM.

Shirley is located on Scenic Route 5, just 10 miles east of I-295 near Richmond and 35 miles west of Williamsburg. For more information call 1-800-232-1613.
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