By Doreen Tyler
Staff writer
The Sleepy Eye Lake ice harvested in January by the Friends of Gilfillan served its ultimate purpose on Tuesday and Wednesday when it was used to make that famous ice cream served at Farmfest.
In the cold of winter, two flatbed trailers were loaded down with ice 17 inches thick. Hauled to the Gilfillan Estate, it was packed in saw dust and stored in the estate’s ice house.
On Tuesday, a pair of young Friends, David and Bobby Klabunde, were put in charge of removing the ice from the ice house, hosing it down and crushing it before it was put in the ice cream makers. “I’m waiting to find a fish frozen in one of the blocks,” David joked.
Before the ice was needed, however, a group of Friends worked to combine cream, sugar and various other ingredients into pails.
They laughed at the prospect that Gilfillan ice cream is derived from a secret recipe. “Lorraine Tauer found the recipe,” Shirley Nolting said. “We perfected it over time.”
Once the ice cream recipe was made, the mixture was chilled for maximum churnability. That was when Duane Bendixen, Wayne Krage and Robert Nolting took over.
The trio manned the two ice cream making machines, making sure a proper mixture of ice and mineral salt kept the ice cream at the perfect temperature for churning. “The secret is the brine,” Duane said. “That’s what keeps the mixture cold.”
It takes just 18 to 20 minutes for the makers to churn the cream mixture into sweet, rich ice cream. “We’ll get about four pails of ice cream from each (machine),” Kurt Christensen said.
By the time the Friends were done with their work on Wednesday, they expected 400 pails of creamy, fresh-churned ice cream to fill six huge freezers at the Gilfillan estate. “Sixty-four pails a freezer,” Ice cream-making chairman Rich Nolting said.
And the ice cream? Of course, the Friends needed to taste samples. Yes, they said. It is delicious.
When Farmfest takes place from Aug. 4 to Aug. 6 at Gilfillan Estate, over 1,400 root beer floats will be served to Farmfest patrons. “We go through 21 big kegs of 1919 Root Beer,” Rich said.
“We figured about 60 percent of the ice cream we make goes to make root beer floats,” Knud Baseballe said. “On hot days like this (Tuesday), it might be even more.”
“They’re a good money maker,” Shirley Nolting confirmed.
As for the Sleepy Eye Lake ice used to make all that ice cream, well, Rich says it was a good year for ice. It was clear, hard, perfect for making ice cream. “It was excellent ice,” Rich said. “Some years the ice is frosty and that’s not too good. (For the January harvest), it was clear. Excellent.”
Sleepy Eye, Minn. —
