Maryland’s Best Ice Cream Trail Opens for 2015!

ANNAPOLIS, MD – Maryland Agriculture Secretary Joe Bartenfelder announced the official start of the 2015 Maryland’s Best Ice Cream Trail today and urged Marylanders to visit at least one of the eight stops on the trail this summer. The announcement leads into June and the start of National Dairy Month.

“MDA launched the Ice Cream Trail three years ago to promote our dairy farmers and encourage Marylanders to visit a real working farm,” said Secretary Bartenfelder. “It’s a great way to enjoy some delicious local ice cream and connect with being on a farm.”

The trail is made up of eight dairy farms across the state that produce and sell ice cream directly to consumers. Residents who are traveling to popular vacation destinations in Maryland this summer – whether to the mountains of western Maryland or the beaches of Ocean City – have an opportunity to make at least one stop on the trail.

Ice Cream Trail Passports are available for download at www.marylandsbest.net or at the creameries. Once participants complete their Ice Cream Trail Passport by visiting every stop on the trail, getting their passport stamped and answering a dairy question from each creamery between June 1 and Sept. 23, they can mail their passport to MDA to be entered into a drawing to be named the 2015 Maryland’s Best Ice Cream Trail Blazer. The grand prize includes a $50 gift certificate to a favorite creamery; a DVD set of Maryland Public Television’s Maryland Farm and Harvest; a copy of the acclaimed cookbook “Dishing Up Maryland,” by Lucie Snodgrass; and incredible bragging rights! No purchase is necessary.

The eight farms on the Ice Cream Trail stretch more than 290 miles from Ocean City in the east to Washington County in the west. The purpose of the trail is to highlight the important contributions of Maryland’s 455 dairy farms which accounted for $244 million in sales in 2014; and to increase the public’s general understanding of dairy farming.

Secretary Bartenfelder and Deputy Secretary Setting will visit all eight of the creameries on the Maryland’s Best Ice Cream Trail this summer, which include: Broom’s Bloom Dairy (Harford County); Chesapeake Bay Farms (Worcester County – with two locations); Keyes Creamery (Harford County); Kilby Cream (Cecil County); Misty Meadows Farm Creamery (Washington County); South Mountain Creamery (Frederick County); Prigel Family Creamery (Baltimore County); and Rocky Point Creamery (Frederick County).

MDA has distributed 28,000 Ice Cream Trail Passports and participants have downloaded more 3,000 Passports online since the program’s launch. While many of the participants were only able to visit a few of the creameries, nearly 400 families from Maryland and surrounding states have completed the entire trail.

Maryland’s Ice Cream Trail is a joint promotion supported by the Maryland Department of Agriculture and the Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association, the local affiliate of the National Dairy Council.  Learn more about dairy farming and why “Your Milk Comes from a Good Place” at www.dairyspot.com.

National Dairy Month, which begins June 1, celebrates the value of milk and dairy products as part of well-balanced diets of every American, as well as the importance of milk production to the agricultural industry. July is National Ice Cream Month.

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