Mystery Drive #2

Today we took our second "Mystery Drive" and went to the Velvet Ice Cream Factory and Ye Old Mill in Utica, Ohio. It is Ohio's ice cream capital and is only about a 25 minute drive from us. The story of Velvet Ice Cream (which is really only known and distributed in Ohio and surrounding areas) is very interesting. An immigrant from Lebanon named Joseph Dager came to Ohio at the turn of the 20th century. He worked in a steel mill in Cleveland until some family members in Utica convinced him that the city was no place to raise a family and he should move to the small town they lived in. Once there, he realized how popular ice cream was among Americans, so in 1914 he started making three varieties of Velvet Ice Cream out of the bottom floor of a local confectionary. Now, four generations later, the Dager family members still run the business and it is quite a local attraction - moved in 1960 to a huge old mill on lots of beautiful acreage.

Part of the tour was seeing into one of the lines of the factory, where they were currently making square half gallon boxes of ice cream.

Afterward, we ate at the restaurant and tasted some of the ice cream flavors like: double chocolate fudge, lemon creme pie, butter pecan and cashew (Velvet's signature flavor), coconut almond and peaches'n'cream.....yum! We let the kids play on the play ground to work off some of that ice cream. Jake and Sarah each took a turn going down the slide with Jack and then he decided to try it himself!

Here are some other fun summer photos of our leisurely time on the farm together as a family. Jack is so happy to be with his brother and sister. He wants to do EVERYTHING Jake does, including making things with Legos!