Flights
Uhlman's Farm is a little "corner" ice cream shop in Westborough, with vast amounts of parking, several different areas of picnic benches, and four windows with room for extensive lines. It's an actual farm - past the parking area is a field at least as big as the parking where I spotted half a dozen cows, and the low fences suggest they probably interact with visitors when given the opportunity.1
The large ice cream cups (the story is lengthy and apparently doesn't fit on the smaller sizes) have a detailed history of Uhlman's having started out as Smithfield Ice Cream in Worcester, which bought milk from Uhlman's, and did a fairly modern "merge with your supplier" back in 1969, and that the modern Uhlman's still uses locally sourced milk (though I suspect the handful of cows on-site isn't quite big enough for their entire supply.)
Everything
Uhlman's has one of the most thorough menus I've found so far - if I ever convert to a standard checklist form for these reviews, I'd probably start here, and then add a couple of novelties from elsewhere.2 While their menu is dominated by hard ice cream, they also have (hard) yogurt, basic soft serve3, and a range of No Sugar added, vegan, and "allergy-friendly" desserts.4
They have toppings (including Maple Walnut) and candy toppings (including nerds, gummy bears, and fruity pebbles) - they of course have chocolate jimmies but I couldn't find them on any of the signs.
They have four sizes of cups, cones, and sundaes (3oz up to 12oz) as well as a four-flavor "flight". They also have hand-packed pints and quarts, and five sizes of "machine-packed" ice cream to-go from pint up to 3 gallons. (Alternatively they have 9" round ice-cream cakes, priced about halfway between 1 gallon and 3 gallon buckets.)
This is also the third place I've seen with "Ice Cream Nachos" - waffle cone pieces with two baby scoops of ice cream and two toppings. Their "New England Weather-inspired" item is the "Cow-lossal Flurry". Other ice-cream-related drinks include frappes (and vegan oat milk frappes), freezes, floats, ice cream soda, frozen lemonade and frozen horchata slushies, crushed fruit smoothies, Falooda and Creamsicle.
They also have "girl scout cookie frappes" - Samoa and Thin Mint - amusingly, the thin mint one is topped with two thin mint cookies, but is based on mint oreo ice cream, which is probably some sort of branding crime...
They also have a "Pup Cup Sundae" - yogurt topped with chopped hotdogs(!), peanut butter whipped cream, and a dog bone.
The ice cream itself
While I was tempted by the Creamsicle and the Thin Mint Frappe, I originally planned to get one of my reference "crunchy + chocolate" combos - Butter Crunch and Extreme Chocolate (with chocolate jimmies). Unfortunately they were out of Extreme Chocolate so I substituted Cookie Monstah on the fly.
The crunch bits were quite good - not hard enough to hurt your teeth, just reasonably crunchy. The ice cream base was close to vanilla (good, but plain.) This is where I first noticed that the cookie monstah flavor was not quite what I was expecting...
It was blue! Specifically, the color of the Cookie Monster himself. I should have expected this, but most shops I've seen the "monster" flavor is green after the Fenway Park Green Monster. The cookie dough was good - sweet with some sugary crunch to it5.
Next Visit
Most likely choices are the Creamsicle and the Thin Mint Frappe, with an option of the Extreme Chocolate if they have it back in stock. Frozen Pudding and Fudge Ripple are also high on the list.
Ice Cream Trucks
Researching ice cream businesses in Massachusetts I've found a number of them that, while they have a street address on google maps, are only an ice cream truck that's available for events and catering. Uhlman's is both - they have two ice cream trucks available, they're even listed on the menu.
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It's not quite as farm-first as Rota Spring Farm - the visible cow field is only about 2½ acres and is surrounded by houses, vs about 50 for Rota Spring and adjacent fields. ↩
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At a glance, the one thing Ulhman's doesn't have is Raspberry Lime Rickies - which aren't really an ice cream thing but a friend of mine likes them so I've been noting the places that had them from the beginning. ↩
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It also looks like they have chocolate dipped cones (plain and waffle), like Erikson's does, but not dipped soft-serve. ↩
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The allergy-friendly option is comfortingly specific: "Dolewhip soft-serve made in a dedicated machine" (flavored in orange, pineapple, and twist.) ↩
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Or maybe some of the butter crunch was still mixed in, but I'm pretty sure it was the cookie dough. ↩
After dining at The Cask And Pig (excellent brisket, and novel appetizers like Spicy Deviled Eggs and Hanging Bacon) in Dartmouth, my friends decided that "we should go generate content for your blog" so we ended up at The Ice Cream Cottage in Fairhaven.1 The Cottage is tucked in down some one-way streets a block in from the waterfront. Smaller than most - one order window and one pickup window under an overhang, a public lot across the street, one bench (the breakfast shop next door2 also has a bunch of benches and closes at 5pm, seemed like a popular overflow spot.) Opened in 2023 on the site of the former Brady's Ice Box.
We got lucky, this was the last weekend they were open late, and after Labor Day they're only open on weekends.
First Visit
The Cottage has a medium-length list of flavors, plus soft serve (twist, but no dip cones), dairy free and sugar free flavors. (The article on their own website credits Acushnet Creamery, about 4 miles up river, for the ice cream itself.)
They also have a 4-scoop "Ice Cream Flight" (seen previously at West Side Creamery), Hawaiian Shave Ice, frappes, floats, and Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches. (Also hot dogs.)
I had a cup of Coffee Oreo Cookie with Butter Crunch underneath. Reasonably strong coffee flavor, and the butter crunch was actually crunchable (in some versions, the crunch bits are too hard to actually bite down on, these were fine.) On a future visit I'll probably try the Hawaiian Shave Ice, especially if it's still hot out; otherwise the Espresso Brownie Fudge, Mocha Peanut Butter, and S'mores are on the short list. They also list a Very New England "Cranberry Harvest" - one hopes that hip waders are not required for serving it.
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There are actually a couple of closer options - and the naïve routing will take you along route 6 across the New Bedford-Fairhaven Swing Bridge which will block you for up to 15 minutes if someone calls in a boat crossing, which is a lot more common than I expected. Just take I-195 to the north and go around on the Howland Road bridge instead - if you cross on I-195 you'll go a couple of miles out of your way and have to backtrack.) ↩
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Mey Breakfast makes donuts and muffins on-site and has coffee and sandwiches, but not much web presence. It also opened in 2023. ↩
West Side Creamery (yes I'm the sort to be amused that the URL is wwww SCREAMERY :-) is in Acton center, a block away from the Acton Coffee House which used to be one of my go-to coffee shops for sipping-and-sketching (not that they've changed, just my habits have.) Right on 111 (as in, drive out rt 2 past the former-prison rotary, take the weird straight-left exit for 111 and keep going straight for another 3 minutes.) Street parking, indoor and outdoor seating. (It's also right across from the Gardner Field park, which has additional parking, picnic benches, and tree shade, though it's mostly a 2-12yo playground - to be fair, on a random Tuesday there were a lot of 6-8yo kids at West Side, apparently ice cream with gummi bear topping is the Best Thing Ever.)
I had "Coffeehouse" (more coffee-flavored-than-usual coffee ice cream), "Green Monster" (Boston-area standard green mint with chocolate cookies and chocolate fudge), and Coffee Heath Bar (what it says on the tin.)
What I missed out on, since it was a First Visit:
- ice cream "flights", 3 or 4 "tasting" scoops your choices of flavor
- ice cream sandwiches made individually with your choice of cookies
- butterscotch explosion
- peanut butter sauce
I'll definitely be back, probably late summer/early fall when I can enjoy the outdoor seating.