The inaugural Pennsylvania Ice Cream Trail last year was such a success that the commonwealth wants to repeat the feat this summer, but with more participants from more counties.
By visiting the creameries and ice cream shops on the trail, which is organized by the state Department of Agriculture, Community Economic Development and Center for Dairy Excellence, Pennsylvanians and tourists can get a cow-to-cone experience by seeing where the ice cream comes from and meeting the people who produce it.
“This is a great opportunity to promote products made right here in the commonwealth and to recognize our dairy farmers who produce high-quality milk and dairy foods for millions of Pennsylvanians,” said Russell Redding, secretary of agriculture, in a press release.
To participate in the ice cream trail this year, creameries must be on a farm or directly connected with a farm that uses Pennsylvania milk and be a PA Preferred member. They should contact the Center of Dairy Excellence at 1-717-346-0849 or info@centerfordairyexcellence.org and the deadline to apply is April 19.
The trail includes a passport program where consumers are eligible for rewards such as T-shirts and ice cream scoops depending on how many creameries they visit. Passport holders would need to receive a stamp at each location on the trail and then submit it by mail to the state Department of Agriculture.
When the trail kicked off last summer, 12 creameries participated and not one was from west of Harrisburg. Instead, they were from Berks, Chester, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh, Montgomery and York counties.
That doesn’t mean that the central and western counties don’t have any working family farms. “They just didn’t hop on the bandwagon,” said Susan Powers, press secretary of the Department of Agriculture. “They missed out on the fun.”
Berkey Creamery, an institution in itself at Penn State, wasn’t considered as it is a teaching farm. But there are working farms such as Meyer Dairy, also in State College, Vale Wood Farms (Loretto, Cambria County), Brunton Dairy (Independence Township, Beaver County) and Jackson Farms (New Salem, Fayette County) that are all family-owned, and make genuine ice cream with milk from their own cattle on a small scale year-round at facilities that are near the cow barns.
Most of the dairy farms surrounding Pittsburgh focus on only supplying milk. Some of the local ice cream shops get their cream and milk from The Spring House in Washington County and Marburger Farm Dairy in Evans City, which are renowned for their white and chocolate milks and buttermilk. Those like Turners Dairy in Penn Hills don’t have a farm in their backyard anymore but partner with dairy farmers in nearby counties and use their milk to make ice cream mixes.
Thomas Tull’s Rivendale Farms in Bulger, Washington County, which has about 170 Jersey cows, does not offer farm visits and the only way to sample its ice cream currently is to go to PNC Park. The Rivendale Sweet Spot concession stand sells soft-serves in chocolate and vanilla flavors and introduced six hard-pack ice creams in vanilla, chocolate, mint chip, chocolate chip, cookie dough and cookies and cream flavors when the baseball season opened earlier this month. Come summer, Rivendale’s ice cream will be available at stores, too. The farm is partnering with Galliker’s Dairy in Johnstown to make the ice cream.
Here are five farms in the 80-mile radius of Pittsburgh that may or may not end up on the second Pennsylvania Ice Cream Trail. But they are worth the drive and should be on your ice cream route this summer and beyond.
Brunton Dairy, 3681 Ridge Road, Aliquippa:
Big Bill Brunton bought the dairy farm way back in 1832, and today it is run by the sixth and seventh generation members of this family. The Bruntons started processing milk in 1962, and plant manager Herb Brunton began making ice cream in 2003 after taking a two-week ice cream-making course at Penn State University in State College. “Before the short course, all I knew was ice cream had milk in it and that I liked it,” he says. Now he can talk about flavor profiles and distinguish between the different kinds of vanilla, which is his favorite.
His vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, cookies ‘n’ cream, cherry vanilla and orange cream ice creams are made with 30% cream, whole milk from the farm’s 200 milking Holsteins, sugar and milk powder. (The farm also has about 120 dry cows and calves.) He doesn’t deviate from those flavors “because I use the cream from the skim and 2% milks we sell and I don’t have extra cream.” In addition to the 56-ounce containers of ice cream and white milks, a regular stream of customers visit the farm store for its chocolate milk, cuts of beef and ground beef.
Jackson Farms, 6718 National Pike, New Salem:
Established in 1957, the 828-acre farm owned by William Jackson and his brother-in-law, Kerry Harvey, has “a couple of hundred Holsteins.” After the cows are milked, the milk is heated and pasteurized and then made into ice cream mix at a plant that is between the retail store and farm. Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, black raspberry, coconut-chocolate chip, blueberry cheesecake and butterscotch are some of the flavors that are made every couple of days, but butter pecan is the farm’s biggest seller. “Our ice cream stands out because it is high in butter fat,” Mr. Harvey says.
Vale Wood Farms, 517 Vale Wood Road, Loretto:
Visiting Vale Wood Farms is a great way to meet cows, farm families and have wonderful ice cream, says Carissa Itle Westrick, who calls herself “the milkman’s great-granddaughter.” Overall, the farm has been in her family for six generations, but it was her great-grandfather, C.A. Itle (pronounced Idle), who started processing milk at the farm and delivering it to the locals by a horse and wagon. He also named it Vale Wood as it is located on a wooded valley. Vale Wood has 200 milking cows that are mostly Holsteins, but there also are a few Jerseys. The ice cream processing plant is right behind the store that sells 15 flavors at at a time year-round and up to 25 in summer. Coconut and pistachio are the current spring flavors and the farm is coming out with a birch beer flavor for the first time in summer. In the past, it has had such flavors as honey with chocolate chips.
Kerber’s Dairy, 1856 Guffey Road, North Huntingdon:
What started as a horse farm by Thomas Kerber’s parents in 1941 became a dairy cattle farm in 1950 and today is an agritourism farm. When the milk business began to fall on lean times in 1990, Mr. Kerber sold his black-and-white Holsteins and started an ice cream business in full earnest, by buying milk from Turners Dairy. Over the years, the farm has shrunk in size from 200 to 65 acres. “We are the dinosaur in the middle of a city,” Mr. Kerber says. “There are housing developments all around us but at the farm you can still see turkey and deer in the fields.” His son is the ice cream meister and makes 60 flavors including seasonal ones. The new flavors this month are Purple Panda (black raspberry with Oreo cookie) and cinnamon pecan.
Windy Ridge, 457 N. Tower Road, Fombell:
“The name was an obvious choice as the farm is in a ridge and it is always windy here,” says Chris Fisher, who owns the 100-year-old dairy farm along with her husband, Steve, and children, Lindsay and Matt. They have 35 Jersey cows and sell flavored milks (root beer, pumpkin and orange cream) and only one kind of white milk — whole. And 75% to 80% of the milk is A2-A2, which means it contains only one type of protein, A2 beta-casein, and is easier to digest. When it comes to the ice cream, Lindsay comes up with all sorts of flavors, 110 in all. Usually five to six are available at a time and flavors include strawberry pretzel salad, cookie monster (Oreos and bright blue cookie dough), apple pie, peanut butter cup and caramel pretzel. However, the mixes are not made with Windy Ridge milk. Since the farm sells only whole milk, Ms. Fisher explains, there is no cream or fat left for ice cream. Also, any extra milk is used to make ricotta cheese.
Arthi Subramaniam: asubramaniam@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1494.
First Published: April 10, 2019, 11:45 a.m.
