From the Desk of the Chief Ice Cream Dipper

We use no till farming for much of the crops we grow.  No-till farming, is a considered a kind of conservation tillage system and is sometimes called zero tillage. It is a way of growing crops from year to year without disturbing the soil through tillage. Once called chemical farming, the reference was subdued in order to promote the idea of no-till being more natural.

This minimizes soil and water erosion and the level of pesticides needed to grow things like corn and soybeans and actually sequesters carbon in the soil - not releasing it into the atmosphere.  We of course also use a lot of 'natural fertilizer' - the by-product of having cows!  This reduces the amount of manufactured fertilizer we purchase and apply to our crops. 

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We try to keep Young's fun -- for our guests and for ourselves. To me, one of the most fun things to do is work on new ice cream flavors. We get ideas from just about anywhere -- our staff bring us ideas, customers have suggestions and we read a lot about what's going on. But the best source of flavor ideas is the imagination. with ice cream, if you can imagine the flavors co-existing, then it probably will taste good -- if not great. Best of all, eating the not so great ideas is still good!

When we first started selling ice cream, we made perhaps 25-30 flavors a year. Now we make over 110 flavors a year! Some of them we make all year, some for a season, and some for as little as a week or two. New flavors we just put out to sell this weekend include Chocolate Chunk Cherry Vanilla. It tastes pretty much just as you would expect! Lemon Custard is back for the spring and summer. A favorite of Congressman Dave Hobson is back, also -- Peaches & Cream. He's been buying dips of Peaches for years now.

If you have any ideas for ice cream,please feel free to email me at cows@youngsdairy.com. I appreciate all flavor ideas!

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One of the coolest things we started doing about 12 years ago is recycling our wastewater.  All of the wastewater from both restaurants and the ice cream room goes through a four stage process to organically break down the 'gray water' to water we can use to irrigate our fields and the Udders & Putters facility (both miniature golf courses & the driving range). 

We operate an advanced facility called a 'wetlands filtration system' that aerates and stores the wastewater until we can use it.  We recycle about 3,000,000 gallons of water each year at Young's!

Since we also operate our own water wells, pumps, and chlorination system, we in essence keep almost all the water we use here on the farm.  We pump it out of the ground, treat it, use the water for drinking, washing dishes, cooking, etc.  We capture it, treat it and use the water to irrigate the water on our fields.

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Cardboard

As you can probably imagine, we go through a lot of cardboard in a day.  All of the different food items we have available at our stores comes in cardboard, things being sold in our gift shop come in cardboard boxes, even the golf balls that we sell at the driving range come in cardboard boxes.

When we started recycling cardboard, we actually got paid for it because not many businesses were doing it and the demand for used cardboard was high.  Times have changed and for the last decade or so, we have paid the waste company to haul the cardboard away to get recycled.  By doing this, we are reducing the amount of landfill space needed and of course are using less trees & energy. 

Aluminum Cans

Most of you know that for the past few summers, we have had a promotion with Pepsi to place a coupon on Mountain Dew cans.  This has been one of our most popular promotions, and as can be expected - we have collected a lot of Mountain Dew cans, 70,000 to be exact (or close to exact - that's a lot of cans to count). 

We donate these cans to local charitiable organizations to recycle - they pick them up and take them to the recycling plant and keep the money to support their organizations.  We have had some success in recycling cans from our company picnics during the year as well, using the same method.

Cooking Oil

We have been recycling our cooking oil for over 10 years.  After we cook our french fries, onion rings, chicken and other goodies in the oil, it goes back to special equipment that filters the oil and otherwise cleans it for many uses - animal feed, cosmetics & soap.  In the past few years, scientists have been able to use recycled cooking oil to burn in diesel trucks, busses and cars. 

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