The Machens created an ice pond in the winter of 1853 by connecting man-made walls to the natural hillside so water from Walney Creek could be retained, freeze, and be harvested for ice cream, chilled drinks, and keeping food cold in the house in an icebox. For quality ice, the pond was filled from 6 to 30 inches deep. Once it froze, the Machens and their hired white workers and enslaved African Americans harvested the ice, loaded it onto wagons, and stored it in the ice house toward the Walney house. The Machens used the ice pond throughout the 1850s, and in a letter of February 18, 1858, Emmeline Machen wrote to her father, Lewis H. Machen, that after a Saturday snow storm they had had enough cold weather to make respectable ice and that James had been busy filling the ice house.