Saturday road trip: On Maryland's Best Ice Cream Trail

Be a trailblazer! / Maryland's Best Ice Cream Trail

Last Saturday, my wife and I drove about 60 miles up the I-95 northeast past Baltimore to Bel Air, Maryland, in Harford County, in search of old fashioned ice cream at Broom's Bloom Dairy.

A lot of other Marylanders and tourists had the same idea as us.

On this summer afternoon, Broom's Bloom Dairy was a very popular destination. When we arrived about 1:30 p.m., there were plenty of cars lining the spacious gravel parking lot, and the line for food and ice cream was out the door. A sign near the entrance warned us: "Be patient – we are not fast food."

I learned that Broom's Bloom Dairy farm is named after the colonial land grand for the area and each year in late summer, there are lots of blooming sunflowers dotting the landscape. In 1997, as David and Kate Dallam began milking the 65 cows on their farm, one thing led to another and, more recently, they started making and selling old fashioned ice cream to go along with farmstead cheese and pork sausage. Their animals are fed a natural diet of grains and forages and they don't use artificial growth hormones.

Once inside, there were still at least half a dozen parties in front of us, but we were determined. The downtime gave us time to peruse the menu posted on a chalkboard, which consisted of variations on a main theme of quiche, mac and cheese, as well as Maryland crab soup, salads and sandwiches all featuring cheese. And, of course, there's the old fashioned ice cream – the reason why we drove to Broom's Bloom Dairy. We had a choice of about a dozen or so traditional (vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, cookies and cream) and eclectic (coffee, salted caramel, graham cracker cake batter, maraschino cherry and chips) choices, but I'm told that Broom's Bloom Dairy produces more than 100 different flavors – and it ranks in Trip Advisor's Top 10 Ice Cream Shops in America. While there may be a certain sadness when a choice gets erased from the chalkboard, soon it's replaced with another amazing flavor. Obviously, it will take plenty of visits for us to get through all of them – traditional and eclectic. Not to worry, though, the farm and the house have been around since the early 1700s, and it's now supporting its ninth generation of the Dallam family.

Welcoming sign to Broom's Bloom Dairy in Bel Air, Md.

I couldn't help but feel that being surrounded by corn fields and having the rustic family farm nearby gives one a feeling that everything at Broom's Bloom Dairy is fresh – and it is. Plus, there's plenty of seating, both inside and outdoors, live music on the weekends, and the big open field lends itself to a friendly, family atmosphere.


By the time it was our turn to order, both of us decided on a lunch of mac and cheese and I asked for mine to be covered in chili, which proved to be a hearty compliment. We pre-paid for our ice cream dessert – each of us chose "a very small size," which was actually a very generous, nearly-two scoop portion of our choice – caramel and cashew – and were given a couple of poker-chip medallions to use when were were ready to order our ice cream. This allowed us to skip the main line and queue up for the afternoon's main attraction. After all, ice cream was the real reason for our trek on Maryland's Best Ice Cream Trail.

There's a back story to our journey on the roads of Maryland's Best Ice Cream Trail:

Maryland has nine dairy farms that offer fresh, delicious on-farm ice cream sold directly to consumers. Together, they make up Maryland's Best Ice Cream Trail. Let's see, in addition to Broom's Bloom Dairy, there's Prigel Family Creamery in Glen Arm (Baltimore County); Kilby Cream in Rising Sun (Cecil County); South Mountain Creamery in Middletown, Rocky Point Creamery in Tuscarora, and Keyes Creamery in Aberdeen (all in Frederick County); Woodbourne Creamery at Rock Hill Orchard in Mount Airy (Montgomery County); Misty Meadows Farm Creamery in Smithsburg (Washington County) and Chesapeake Bay Farms, Inc., in Berlin (Worcester County).

"The Maryland's Best Ice Cream Trail is a great way to encourage Marylanders to get out and visit a real working farm," Maryland Agriculture Secretary Joe Bartenfelder said last month in kicking off the 2017 season. "Maryland is home to many outstanding dairy operations, and I challenge all residents to visit at least one of the trail's nine stops this summer."

Sunflowers dot the landscape at Broom's Bloom Dairy.

Now in its fifth year, Maryland's Best Ice Cream Trail – a joint production supported by the Maryland Department of Agriculture and the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association, the local affiliate of the National Dairy Council – officially opened its 2017 season on May 26 and it runs through September 25.

Ice cream enthusiasts can become a "trailblazer" by having their ice cream passport stamped by all nine creameries. And, if they wish, they can mail it in to the state's agriculture department to be entered in a drawing for some cool food and dairy-themed prizes.

Knowing that the milk that goes into the ice cream served on Maryland's Best Ice Cream Trail comes from good places, the Maryland Department of Agriculture wants everyone to know that these dairy farmers take good care of their animals and the land that they farm. Not only are they active members of their respective communities, they contribute greatly to their local economies, which we witnessed firsthand on this sunny summer afternoon. In the hour or so we were at Broom's Bloom Dairy, easily 100 scoops of ice cream were dished up by the enthusiastic and friendly waitstaff. With lots of enjoyable and creative, home-made flavors, there was not shortage of good choices. My velvety caramel cashew ice cream – most definitely – was not only delicious, it was welcome relief on this hot summer afternoon.

Caramel and cashew ice cream at Broom's Bloom Dairy.

Think about it. What a great concept enjoying homemade ice cream on a dairy farm is – changing Maryland for the better, so the slogan goes. With one stamp in our Maryland's Best Ice Cream Trail passport, we hope to visit many more this summer.

Note: Broom's Bloom Dairy, 1700 S. Fountain Green Road (Maryland Highway 543), in Bel Air, is open Tuesday-Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 9 p.m.; closed Monday. 

www.bbdairy.com. 

Photos: Courtesy of Maryland Dept. of Agriculture and Broom's Bloom Dairy. Ice cream photo by Michael Dickens © 2017.