From the Desk of the Chief Ice Cream Dipper

Changes and Remodeling

2008-04-22T02:53:14Z

Over the winter we've been dreaming and figuring out how to make Young's more desireable to visit, more fun and interesting for our Guests.

Just some of the changes we've done in the past couple of weeks and/or are working on within the next month:

Removed part of a wall at the Dairy Store to open up the dining room, make it easier to get in and out of when we are busy.

Replaced the entrance flooring into the dining room and our server area.

Replace the wallpaper in the dining room of the Dairy Store.

We've removed some chain link fence located between the picnic area and the driving range and batting cages. This should make it easier to move around that area.

We are getting ready to build a 'goat walk' -- a much more ambitious (and safe) are for our lpayful goats to climb and put on a show for our Guests.

Within the next month, we should have installed a vending machine near the batting cages to vend tokens. It will accept cash and debit or credit cards. Once again, this is for convenience and speed. We also plan to install a driving range golf ball vending machine located in the covered tee area.

We are adding two large round tables to the choices at The Golden Jersey Inn and replacing a good number of the chairs that have been in daily use for 10 plus years. The round tables will give our larger groups and familes a good place to sit and talk while enjoying a meal.

Moovers & Shakers, our golf cart driven barrel ride into our fields, will have a new feature this spring -- a twenty foot giant tunnel! It looks like fun.

We are repaving about a third of our parking lots and fixing potholes that appeared this winter.

There's more coming than this summer -- details coming from a future blog.

All Natural Ice Cream Flavors

2008-04-21T18:14:06Z

All Natural Flavors of Young’s Ice Cream

We have worked with our suppliers to identify the flavors of ice cream that use all natural ingredients. This is a big task, as over a year’s time, we make over 110 different flavors of ice cream – some flavors are here all year and some flavors are around for a month or less – it’s just fun to experiment with ice cream flavors!

These are the flavors that we can identify as all natural. Some of these flavors are permanent and some are seasonal.

•   Vanilla
•   Strawberry
•   Butter Pecan
•   Chocolate Peanut Butter
•   Caramel Chocolate Toffee
•   Chocolate Chunk Cherry Vanilla
•   Coffee
•   Banana
•   Pumpkin
•   Cinnamon
•   Chocoffee

We are continuing to work with our flavor suppliers to make more flavors all natural and will let you know as we expand this list.

Challenges and Opportunities

2008-04-10T23:44:00Z

As we are just getting into spring and warm weather, the busy season for Young's is just around the corner. We are happy to see the sun shine -- ice cream sales like warm weather! I don't need to tell you that there is a more than normal amount of uncertainty with a lot of things that affect us at Young's and you, our valued Guests. The price of oil -- with gas prices so high, how is that going to affect visits to Young's this year?

On the one hand, it's more expensive to get in your car and drive 20 or 30 miles to get to our farm. On the other hand, we are a lot closer and cheaper to visit than many of the alternatives, like Kings Island or Cedar's Point, or a Reds game, for example. Only time will tell.

Our Guests can be assured we are focused on making your trip to Young's a worthwhile experience. We hire, train and coach the ways to make each Guest visit a good experience. I know we are not perfect and we don't always deliver, but we always strive to make your visit fun and enjoyable -- worth your money, time and gas! The price of oil has affected so many things. Last year our packaging (paper, plastic, or other) went up 12-20%). I don't need to tell many of you how the cost of dairy, eggs, sugar and flour have increased.

Most of this can be attributed to the use of so much corn to make ethanol. I don't know what the long term solutions are to the energy crisis, but I don't think the idea of using corn is a sustainable idea. It may be a short term fix, but the worldwide disruption in food prices caused by this just isn't going to work in the future. We are at work inventing new things to do at Young's this year (more on that in another posting). We are also replacing some old floors and wallpaper at the Dairy Store, getting some new furniture in and repairing a major part of our parking lot. Kinda boring stuff, but it's a part of everyday business and taking care of our Guests. Take care -- I hope to see you soon at Young's. Thanks for your business. Dan

Check Out our Green Thumb - No Till Farming

2008-02-20T03:28:27Z

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.

New Homemade Ice Cream Flavors

2008-02-16T21:14:51Z

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!

Recycling Our h2o

2008-02-13T03:18:47Z

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.

Recycling Fever!

2008-02-06T02:49:37Z

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.

Reuse, Reuse, Reuse & Reuse

2008-01-29T13:25:08Z

Plastic Three Gallons for Ice Cream

We started using plastic three gallons and lids for our ice cream about 15 years ago. Before that time, we used disposable cardboard containers with metal rims (the old timers around here remember these - the metal rims sometimes were very sharp). These cardboard containers were one time use only, then we threw them out.

By reusing the plastic containers, we get about 10 or so uses for each container before it develops a crack or breaks. I estimate over the past 15 years we have used 200,000 less three gallon ice cream containers. That's 200,000 less in the landfill, fewer trees used, and less overall energy used.

Use of Plates & Metal Tableware at The Dairy Store

At the beginning of our foodservice at the Dairy Store, we used pretty much all disposable plates and plastic tableware. While we still use quite a bit of disposable items at The Dairy Store, we have reduced our waste stream significantly over the years by investing in reusable plates, bowls, knives, forks and spoons.

The Gold-n-Green Jersey Inn

2008-01-22T13:57:32Z

The Golden Jersey Inn building is 10 years old this year. Even though it is a large, open-air kind of building, it was designed to minimize energy usage. We heat and air condition using efficient heat pumps. Most important is the insulating characteristics of the building itself. We use half the electricity to operate this building (which is about 15% cubic feet larger) compared to The Dairy Store - which the first part was built 40 years ago. We were able to use green building technology and science to create a much more efficient bulding at The Golden Jersey Inn.

A Green Young's

2008-01-15T16:54:40Z

Many of you may not be aware of all the things we do at Young's to minimize our waste, reduce energy usage and to reduce our use of natural resources. Below are some things we have done over the years and continue to do. Some of these things we've been doing for more than 15 years, and some are more recent.

Over the coming weeks, I will talk about some of the things we do around the farm to help reduce our "environmental footprint". This is important to me and all of us who work at Young's. I feel good when we use less resources and especially energy resources. Anything I can do to reduce the amount of oil we import or coal we burn helps our country and the environment.