Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
L
$$
Harborside Inn,
185 State St.,
Boston (
&
617/670-6015;
www.harbor
sideinnboston.com). $$$
The Charles
Hotel,
1 Bennett St., Cambridge (
&
800/
882-1818
or 617/864-1200; www.charles
hotel.com).
Lizzy's
(29 Church St., near Harvard Sq.;
&
617/354-2911
), a slender takeout shop
that prides itself on its decadent sundaes.
(
Boston Logan International (8
3
⁄
4
miles/
14km).
Ice Creameries
500
Woodside Farm Creamery
The Pasture-to-Cone Connection
Hockessin, Delaware
The Mitchell family has worked Woodside
Farm since 1796, and until 1961, it was
always a dairy farm. For the next 35 years,
the Mitchells kept on farming, even as the
western Wilmington suburbs gradually
encroached on their pastoral acreage.
Then in 1995, rather than sell the family
farm, the current generation of Mitchells
launched a new dairy herd, but with a
whole different approach—a farm-to-table
ethic. They weren't going to just milk their
cows and ship the milk off to some big
industrial dairy; they were going to turn
that milk into small batches of natural ice
cream and sell it right on the farm.
Driving out to Woodside Farm is like
having a model farm visit, an artisanal
manufactory tour, and an ice-cream
splurge all in one. As Jim Mitchell is fond of
telling customers, “A week ago that ice
cream you're eating was grass,” and each
stage of that weeklong process happens
right here. As you sit licking your cone at
the picnic table outside the gray clapboard
ice-cream stand (a converted farm shed),
you can gaze out over the level green pas-
tures where a herd of about 30 brown
Jersey cows placidly graze free on a lush
mix of alfalfa, clover, rye grass, and
orchard grass. Morning and evening, the
cows are steered into the milking parlor to
be milked (ask if you can see the milking
machines); their high-butterfat milk is then
sent to a local dairy to be pasteurized and
homologized, then combined with sugar
and eggs to make “sweet cream.” In a
small building next to the milking parlor,
the sweet cream is manually combined
with various flavor ingredients, then fro-
zen in small batches in a stainless-steel
mixing freezer.
Along with a wide range of more tradi-
tional flavors, Woodside's cheery scoopers
dish out novelty flavors like peanut butter
and jelly, Fluffernutter, chocolate thunder,
turtle (caramel and pecan pieces in choco-
late ice cream), dirt (crushed Oreos and
gummy worms in chocolate ice cream—a
big hit with kids), and motor oil (which they
describe as “chocolate-flavored tractor
engine crankcase deposits”—but it sure
tastes like coffee ice cream with fudge swirls
and green-tinted caramel goo). Speaking of
fudge, Woodside Farm also sells a selection
of wickedly dense handmade fudge. The ice
cream stand is only open from early April
through October—like good farmers, they
respect the rhythms of the seasons.
1310 Little Baltimore Rd. (
&
302-239-
9847;
www.woodsidefarmcreamery.com).
(
New Castle County Airport, Wilming-
ton (10 miles/16km).
L
$$$
Inn at Montchanin Village,
Rte. 100 and Kirk Rd., Montchanin, Dela-
ware (
&
800/COWBIRD
[800/269-2473]
or 302/888-2133; www.montchanin.com).
$
Fairfield Inn Wilmington Newark
, 65
Geoffrey Dr., Newark, Delaware (
&
800/
228-2800
or 302/292-1500; www.marriott.
com).
