Act 5, Scene 8: “And We Really Liked the Ice Cream”

TRL and S take the boys to Vermont to their friend’s farm. They visit the chicken coop to see where eggs (and the evening dinner) come from, look at the turkeys, walk right up to cows, feed the rainbow trout in the pond, pick strawberries from the garden, pet Jr. the black-nosed sheep, and go wading in the nearby lake. That’s all on the first day. TRL and S also take them to a farm museum, where they see old farm implements and visit milk cows in their milk pens, say hi to prize-winning horses, and see ice cream being made the old-fashioned way: vanilla, cream and sugar are dumped into a metal tub, it is sealed and covered with ice and salt and hand-cranked for 20 minutes in the shade of a 200-year-old maple tree next to the old ice house. The boys get to sample the result.

Back in the burbs, TRL asks: “Guys, what was your favorite part of the whole weekend?”

“Eating the ice cream,” they announce in unison.

Tepidly flavored marginally cold too-soft ice cream wins out over the Real Farm Experience.

“We should have just spread some manure on the driveway and then gone to Friendly’s,” TRL grunts to S.