<P> Another ice famine in 1870 then impacted both Boston and the Hudson, with a further famine following in 1880; as a result entrepreneurs descended on the Kennebec River in Maine as an alternative source . The Kennebec, along with the Penboscot and Sheepscot, was widely opened up for the ice industry, becoming an important source, particularly in warm winters, for the rest of the 19th century . </P> <P> By the 1860s, natural ice was increasingly being used to move western American products to the east, starting with chilled meat from Chicago . There was some initial opposition, both from the cattle - car owners and from eastern butchers, who stood to lose out from the trade; by the 1870s, however, multiple shipments were leaving for the east each day . Chilled butter from the mid-West was then shipped onwards from New York to Europe, and by the 1870s 15 percent of the United Kingdom's butter consumption was being met in this way . A chain of icing stations at Chicago, Omaha, Utah and Sierra Nevada allowed railroad refrigerator cars to cross the continent . The ability of ice companies to ship their product by rail from the east proved the final straw for the Alaskan ice trade, which collapsed during the 1870s and 1880s in the face of the competition, destroying the local saw - mill industry in the process . </P> <P> During the 1870s ice began to be used by Timothy Eastman, of the Bell Brothers firm, to transport American meat to Britain; the first shipment successfully arrived in 1875 and by the following year 9,888 tons (8,909,000 kg) of meat was shipped . The chilled meat was retailed through special warehouses and stores . There was concern in Britain that chilled American meat might flood the market and harm domestic farmers, but the exports continued . The rival Chicago - based meat firms of Armour and Swift entered the refrigerated meat transport market in the late 1870, establishing their own fleet of refrigerator cars, network of icing stations and other infrastructure, increasing the sales of chilled Chicago beef to the eastern seaboard from 15,680 tons (14,128,000 kg) a year in 1880, to 173,067 tons (155,933,000 kg) in 1884 . </P> <P> Although the manufacture of artificial plant ice was still negligible in 1880, it began to grow in volume towards the end of the century as technological improvements finally allowed the production of plant ice at a competitive price . Typically ice plants first took hold in more distant locations where natural ice was at a cost disadvantage . The Australian and Indian markets were already dominated by plant ice, and ice plants began to be built in Brazil during the 1880s and 1890s, slowly coming to replace imported ice . In the U.S., plants began to become more numerous in the southern states . The long distance transportation companies continued to use cheap natural ice for the bulk of their refrigeration needs, but they now used purchased local plant ice at key points across the US, to allow for surge demand and to avoid the need to hold reserve stocks of natural ice . After 1898 the British fishing industry too began to turn to plant ice to refrigerate its catches . </P>

How did they get ice in the middle ages