Sweet dreams: St. Ignatius creamery opens
By MEGAN STRICKLAND
Daily Inter Lake
It has been a slow churn of a year for Connie Surber and Laura Ginsberg, but it has also been one with sweet rewards: the partners welcomed son Finn on July 6, a little over a month after opening the Golden Yoke Creamery in St. Ignatius, bringing a dream closer to reality.
The creamery, which makes ice cream products, has been years in the making. Surber is a Virginia Tech dairy science graduate who loved growing up on a farm. Ginsberg had the opportunity to study dairies in New Zealand on a Fulbright scholarship. The pair decided to start a dairy in St. Ignatius and got the ball rolling in 2012 with a single Jersey-Holstein crossbred heifer that was shared with another owner. After renting, the pair eventually purchased a piece of land in St. Ignatius, bought some sheep, chickens and other farm animals and started building a herd.
The ultimate goal was to have dairy cows produce enough milk on the farm to source a creamery. The Golden Yoke Farm practices grazing intensive agriculture, which calls for the herd to be moved rotationally on the pasture in “pods,” each day or so. The “pods” are a essentially strings of wire wrapped around a perimeter that keeps the cattle from escaping. The practice is a lot of work, but is better for the land and helps improve production.
Currently, the couple’s herd is growing and milk is used for experimentation and to feed the farm’s delicious “sweet cream pork” pigs that are also for sale. The farm will need a certified milking station in order to use the milk in their own ice cream, so Ginsberg and Surber made the decision to use store-bought milk from Rod’s Harvest Foods to get the ice cream production side of the business going.
“We don’t buy a mix, we are making a mix with the ultimate goal of us using our own milk from our own cows,” Surber said. “Right now I’m just buying milk and cream from the grocery from Rod’s, in bulk qualities, but it’s still the same basic milk, cream and sugar. Very simple.”
Any additives are natural extracts.
“We try to keep it as natural and simple as possible,” Ginsberg said.
Pints of slowly churned, homestyle ice cream are sold at Rod’s Harvest Foods in St. Ignatius, the Good Food Store and The Missoula Food Co-op in Missoula, and Flathead Lake Cheese in Polson. Flavors available include: vanilla, mint with chocolate flake, honey, coffee, and salted caramel. The creamery also produces ice cream sandwiches made out of the creamery’s vanilla and homemade chocolate chip cookies.
The creamery also has a drive through window located within sight of U.S. 93 in St. Ignatius that is open Friday and Saturday from noon until 9 p.m. and Sunday from noon until 8 p.m. It is the place to go for patrons interested in tasting trial batches like ice cream with brownie chunks.
Surber said the town has been very supportive of the business’ opening.
“It’s been really positive,” Surber said. “The only negative comments we’ve gotten is: why aren’t you open more days and why aren’t you easier to find? We are going to try to get more signage down the road.”
Wendi Arnold of Flathead Lake Cheese has devoted an entire freezer to selling the ice cream at her drive through window.
“The response has been spectacular,” Arnold said the first week of August. “I will be picking up my fourth order tomorrow.”
Arnold said it is great to have another local food business in the area and that the ice cream is delicious.
“It is very tasty,” Arnold said. “The ice cream sandwiches are wonderfully generous.”
Lita Fonda of Polson heard about the ice cream through the Flathead Lake Cheese newsletter and decided to stop by last Thursday on a lunch break. Fonda gets Flathead Lake Cheese through a local farm co-operative, so she doesn’t often get the change to stop by the shop. The draw of locally-sourced ice cream was enough to draw her to the store.
“It’s excellent,” she said after trying one of the ice cream sandwiches. “The only challenge is trying to wrap your mouth around them. Overall it’s really tasty.”
Fonda also noted that the prices of the ice cream are in line with what she would pay for similar products at health food stores in the area.
“It’s a good price,” Fonda said. “Buy local.”
Surber said that the creamery would like to sell more wholesale batches to vendors.
Anyone interested in carrying the ice cream can contact the farm at 406-552-2895 or 406-552-5079.