Cold Comfort

Sometimes on a hot summer evening, after the dishes are washed and we should be in the garden weeding, my husband, Ed, and I instead put the top down on my car and ride to Kate’s for some of her homemade ice cream.

It’s a straight shot down the road, through the vinyl-clad subdivisions that pock the Bel Air suburbs, past the historic wood-and-stone house that Kate and David Dallam and their three girls share, and into a parking lot with an “open” flag fluttering. At the end of the lane is a cow-shaped wooden sign painted with the words “Broom’s Bloom Dairy Ice Cream.” Broom’s Bloom is the official name of the 210-acre farm that has been in David’s family for nine generations, since the early 1700s—and also the name of an ice cream parlor that sits on the edge of the Dallams’ cornfield.

Ed and I are in good company going to Kate’s, as everyone seems to call it. In summer the parking lot is always crowded. Spots that become vacant are filled in less time than it takes to read the chalkboard that lists the flavors of the day. On Friday and Saturday nights, a line snakes out to the parking lot. Neighbors who seldom have time to visit run into one another there and swap news.

Generations of families, from tiny babies held by elderly grandparents to gangly teenagers, wait together in groups, deliberating which of the dozen or so creamy flavors to try. Some people, including my husband, choose from the standards that Kate makes week after week—chocolate and vanilla—while others like me will try just about everything seasonal, because you don’t know how long she’ll feature red raspberry or black cherry ice cream.

Five years ago, no one imagined an ice cream parlor on the Dallam farm, not even Kate. But falling raw milk prices and rising feed costs are driving small farms out of business, and sometimes fear will make a sane woman do crazy things. In Kate’s case, she began by diverting some of their milk to make artisan cheeses. When she suggested making ice cream, it seemed fitting to sell it right there on the farm. What began as a plan for a simple ice cream stand grew into a small country store, where Kate sells not just her own products but those of other local farmers too. And from the day it opened, oddly enough on a cold November day, customers have appeared as reliably as farmers on a milking schedule.

There is something irresistible about Kate’s place. It isn’t just the poplar-sided, metal-roofed building that David designed and her brother built, or the funky tables made from old doors, or Kate’s grandmother’s vintage postcards tucked under the glass on the tabletops. It isn’t just the buckets of local flowers for sale, or sitting on the veranda while Maggie, the Dallams’ Labrador retriever, wanders around in search of ice cream drips.

It’s also just that it exists, an ice cream parlor on a family farm of just 65 well-tended Holstein cows. It’s that a smart woman thought creatively and was rewarded for it. It’s that Kate’s flavors do change all the time, and that she’ll even make a custom batch if you ask her to—for no special reason. It’s that we all need more places like Kate’s. It’s that Kate lets us play a role, no matter how tiny, in saving the family farm.

And it’s also that her ice cream is delicious.