Ice Cream in the Country

After our assignment at the MTC,  President and Sister Bleak (pronounced Blake) invited us to go for a ride with them and to have an ice cream cone.  So we left and rode for 10-15 minutes into the countryside.  We found a strawberry farm.

The white is plastic covering the plants.  This farmer has the distinct honor of being the first each year to pick berries as he keeps them under white plastic.  They start ripening in early September which would  be early March for the US.

It is really out in the country.  On the hillside beyond the fields you can see little white balls that are running around.  I will add an additional picture here to illustrate.

These little white balls come in three sizes.  There are the parent-size sheep which are still fat with wool as it is too early and cool to shear them still. The next ones are the yearlings  and then there are the new lambs.  We passed field after field of sheep and then we also saw cows and horses.  The horses are still under blanket.  President Bleak thought that those horses would be ones that were used in racing or jumping competitions.



The strawberry farmer has an interesting business.  He sells strawberries that are picked and ready to eat.  They come in a pint-size plastic container and are like what you would buy in the US.  Then they have another container which would be quart-size and the berries are bigger and have long stems on them for dipping.  Of course they have the dip for it as well.  These are four times the cost of the pint.  They have a small assortment of vegetables to sell also.

Their biggest business I think is their ice cream one.  They have a chest freezer that has scoops of ice cream that are frozen separately.  They also have a bin of frozen berries.  Into an auger-type machine they put a ball of the ice cream and then a scoop of the frozen berries and then another ball of ice cream.  They they put in the cone shaped pusher and turn on the machine.  Out comes just a little bit of white ice cream and it is followed by dark pink stranberry ice cream which is then piped into a supar cone.  It is pretty tasty ice cream.  Certainly fresh!

These are photos of President Bleak and then Michael and Sister Bleak enjoying their sweet treats.  If you will note Michael has two cones....one in each hand.  He is just holding mine and is not being a real pig here!  I was taking the pictures.