Round Top Ice Cream has made its home in this replica of the barn at the orginal Round Top Farm since 1998. Founded in 1924, the locally owned business formally closed for the season on Monday, Oct. 21. (Johnathan Riley photo)
Round Top Ice Cream’s 100th year of frozen dessert production came to a close on Monday, Oct. 21 when the Damariscotta business shut the barn doors for the season.
The sweet, century-long history begins next door to where the business is located on 526 Main St. in Damariscotta at the Round Top Center for the Arts, formerly Round Top Farm.
The farm, owned by Edward Freeman, included dairy operations, poultry, and potatoes.
In 1924, Round Top Farm General Manager Edward B. Denny made a decision that’d change the landscape for Lincoln County sweet tooth for the next century: he decided to start making ice cream.
Denny, in a 1980 interview with The Lincoln County News, said he got the idea to make the sweet treat after attending a lecture at a convention for dairy farmers.
“I heard a lecture suggest that small dairy farmers could profitably make ice cream if they went about it right,” Denny said.
That decision, Denny said, was motivated by nothing other than sound business judgment.
The early versions of the locally-famed ice cream contained as much as 33% butter cream. According to Denny, by the time he retired in 1977, that percentage went down by half.
“Today no one can use that much cream because of the cost. You don’t find ice cream with more than 14% cream nowadays (1980),” he said.
Denny’s grandson John Reny, president of Renys Department Stores, said he has fond memories as a teenager working in the hay fields of the farm. He also said he isn’t surprised by the ice cream stands continued success and that growing up the family always had some ice cream in the house.
“I think it’s great,” he said in a phone interview on Thursday, Oct. 24.
By the 1960s, dairy farm employees came together and bought the ice cream business from Freeman as well as the equipment to make the dessert.
According to The Lincoln County News archives, the business changed hands a few times over the next decade: Denny sold it to Malcom Blanchard: who then sold it to Richard Gaeth. Gerd and Donna Hasel bought it in 1977 from Gaeth before selling it to Gary and Brenda Woodcock in 1987.
The ice cream was sold from a stand at the entrance to the Round Top Farm property on Main Street until 1998 when the Woodcocks built a replica of the farm’s hay barn next door. On April 17 of that year, the business and its ice cream making production moved to 526 Main St. where it is today.
In an interview with First National Bank in September, current Round Top Ice Cream owner Stephanie Poland, daughter of Gary and Brenda Woodcock, said the business still makes all of its ice cream on site.
Some of the early flavors included vanilla, chocolate, blueberry, and strawberry. Today, the business makes 55 different hard serve flavors, according to Round Top Ice Cream’s website, roundtopicecream.com.
