Jersey Boys 

Yellow neon letters curl in the window above bright café chairs outside Jersey Scoops in Loleta (348 Main St.). Inside, there are more rainbow-colored chairs and barstools, shelves and refrigerators packed with local jams and snacks, and a refrigerator case stuffed with beef and eggs from Ferndale's Foggy Bottoms Boys Farm. On a barnwood wall (made from an actual barn) are galvanized buckets stuffed with wool blankets and skeins of yarn from the farm's sheep. It's almost enough to distract one from the main attraction: a freezer case of freshly made ice cream.

Husbands Thomas and Cody Nicholson Stratton of Foggy Bottoms Boys started planning Jersey Scoops in 2020, naming it after the cows at Nicholson Livestock Dairy, the nearly 99-year-old dairy run by Cody's family. It stands as one of only a handful of open storefronts across from the old train tracks along Loleta's brief Main Street.

Both men grew up making ice cream at home with their families, says Thomas, in his case, with a table-top ice cream maker. "The one we had when I was really young, you had to hand do it for hours and hours," he says. And Cody's dairy farming family, he points out, came from a long line of proud Danish home ice cream makers.

Smaller, more accessible equipment has made it easier for a dairy to produce and sell its own ice cream, rather than only selling its milk to manufacturers. Thomas says there were still "a lot of hoops to go through," like acquiring two additional permits and three more licenses. But with help from the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission and a grant from the Pacific Coast Coalition - Dairy Business Innovation Initiative, the Nicholson Strattons were able to navigate the process and purchase equipment. Big ticket items included a pasteurizer, an ice cream batch freezer and a soft serve machine, which can run from a couple thousand dollars for a basic model to closer to $25,000 for a user-friendly design that's built to last, says Thomas.

The soft serve vanilla and chocolate (and twist, of course) are made with less fat and more stabilizers than the ice cream the Nicholson Strattons made as kids, keeping it soft enough to form a curl at the top without melting too quickly ($4 small). It's translucent and milky with a light, nostalgic flavor. Both vanilla and chocolate are piped into Oreo sandwich cookies sold in six-packs — give them a few minutes out of the freezer to soften again before digging in ($7).

There's more milkfat, though still less than 10 percent, according to Thomas, and fewer stabilizers in the scoopable batches at the counter ($4 single). Some flavors, like the cookies and cream or the vanilla, use eggs as an emulsifier like a classic frozen custard, but others, like the chocolate, are straight milkfat. That 10 percent goes a long way, especially at the right temperature, just south of melting. The chocolate has an old-fashioned, fudgy flavor, the richness of which spreads almost instantly over your tongue. The spoon pulls peaks from the scoop, rather than breaking through it, as with a colder, harder packed ice cream.

On a recent visit, holiday flavors like pumpkin pie and the candy crunchy Cinna-mint were keeping the season going, along with a Nutty-ella, PB&J and a simple strawberry. Sampling is encouraged.

Some of the flavor may be down to how fresh the ice cream is. "We're not homogenizing our milk," says Thomas. Since they make the ice cream within 24 hours of milking the cows, with the milk still in its original incorporated state, they don't have to redistribute the fat that would have risen to the top. "We pull it at 4 a.m., chill it and bring it to the shop at, like. 7 a.m." By around noon, it's ice cream. "When you overprocess things, you have to rebalance and readjust," he says. "For us, we're just doing it the right way the first time."

Thomas says it's been fun to see people stop in for a treat after going to the post office or Loleta Market next door, eat their cones on the grass across the street or hold birthday parties in the shop. As remote as Loleta is, he says there's plenty of traffic. "The LGBTQ+ and ally community has shown up in force" from around the county, state and beyond, he adds. Jersey Scoops has also gotten community support in the form of its 85-member Tasting Team, whose members pay a small fee to sample prospective flavors, give feedback and offer suggestions. There are limits, though. Thomas says a recent request for mac and cheese ice cream similar to that of another producer was declined. "It is absolutely delicious but no."

Making pints available in stores around the county is in the works, but they're still nailing down the shop's rotating flavors. Cody's favorite Danish butter cookie ice cream that sold well over the holidays is coming back, and in the kitchen there's a test batch made with local Hum Yum caramel, which, like the Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate at the counter, uses milk from the family dairy. Thomas' personal favorite mint chocolate chip is in testing, too, as they search for the semi-cylindrical chips of his childhood memories, as well as the correct balance of mint.

Thomas is willing to wait. "We don't have it out yet because we don't want to do it until it's perfect."

Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 320, or [email protected]. Follow her on Instagram @JFumikoCahill and on Mastodon @jenniferfumikocahill.