Local creameries featured on Maryland’s Best Ice Cream Trail through September

When Chip Savage, owner of Happy Cow Creamery in Union Bridge, serves up a cone of salted caramel pretzel or mint chip ice cream this summer, he knows he’s helping area residents learn more about Maryland agriculture.

As part of the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s annual Maryland’s Best Ice Cream Trail, Happy Cow Creamery welcomes customers to its farm, where they can enjoy a cold treat and learn more about where their food comes from.

“There’s less and less percentage of the public that knows about agriculture or who have ever seen a cow or a goat or a chicken,” Savage said. “A lot of people just go to the grocery store and expect their food to be there, so we started adding this so we can explain about farming and explain about how we treat our cows and how we take care of our chickens or our pigs.”

This is the 12th year that the department is hosting the ice cream trail, designed to promote the state’s dairy industry. It features 12 creameries and stretches more than 145 miles from Washington County to Kent County.

Participants are encouraged to take a photo when they stop at a spot on the trail and share their visit on social media. Once all locations have been visited, participants can email photos to icecream.trail1@maryland.gov by Sept. 10 to be entered to win a $50 gift card to a creamery of their choice.

Kristin Hanna, director of special projects for the Department of Agriculture, said the ice cream trail is a great way for residents to support local farms and farmers.

“We want our farms to stay and they need to be able to be profitable and one of the ways we can do that is through these kinds of add-ons like adding a creamery to your farm,” she said. “It’s not only a delicious product, but you’re really helping out your local farmers.”

Woodbourne Creamery at Rock Hill Orchard in Mount Airy is another creamery featured on the trail. Owned by John and Mary Fendrick, the creamery includes a variety of seasonal and year-round ice cream flavors, including black raspberry, chocolate chip, dark chocolate, malted milk ball and strawberry, made with milk from its herd of Guernsey cows.

John Fendrick said serving ice cream has helped support his farm.

“Without ice cream, we couldn’t survive as a farm because we would not make enough money either as an orchard or as a dairy if we were just doing milk,” he said. “The ice cream trail is great from the perspective of advertising. It brings a lot of people in and it’s a great thing the state puts together.”

Broom’s Bloom Dairy in Bel Air, owned by David and Kate Dallam for nearly three decades, is also part of the trail this year. The creamery sells ice cream made onsite from milk produced by its 54 dairy cows.

The dairy has sold more than 150 different flavors of ice cream over the past two decades. The most popular are butter pecan, lemon and a chocolate-based cookies and cream flavor called “dirt.”

Kate Dallam said it is an honor for her family’s creamery to be considered one of the best places in the state to get ice cream.

“We are so grateful to the customers around us and to the community that we belong to that they support us the way they do,” she said. “We appreciate them every bit as much as they appreciate us.”

Other creameries on the trail include:

• Chesapeake Bay Farms Inc., 8905 Logtown Road, Berlin or 4111 Whitesburg Road, Pocomoke
• Deliteful Dairy, 16320 Long Delite Lane, Williamsport
• Keyes Creamery, 349 Hopewell Road, Churchville
• Lockbriar Farms, 10051 Woorton Road, Chestertown
• Misty Meadow Farm Creamery, 14325 Misty Meadow Road, Smithsburg
• Moo Cow Creamery at Walnut Ridge Farm, 3935 Bussard Road, Middleton
• Prigel Family Creamery, 4852 Long Green Road, Glen Arm
• Rocky Point Creamery, 4323 Tuscarora Road, Tuscarora
• South Mountain Creamery, 8305 Bolivar Road, Middletown
• South Mountain Ice Cream Shop, 50 Citizen’s Way, Suite 101, Frederick

For more information about the ice cream trail, visit marylandsbest.maryland.gov .