In speaking with members of the Cook family of Cook Farm in Hadley, the farm behind the local-favorite Flayvors of Cook Farm ice cream stand, it’s evident there are many stories behind each cone of homemade ice cream, jug of raw milk, or cut of beef that’s raised.
Across five generations and 112 years of raising cows, the tales add up.
For instance, how did Flayvors of Cook Farm get its unique spelling? Like most things sold there, the story starts with a cow.
As the farm’s patriarch, Gordie Cook tells it: “Back in 1985, I bought this cow named Herronholm Elevations Fayvor from Don Herron and Sons in Leyden. They’re no longer in business, but they bred some great cows, this being one of ’em.”
She proved a wonderful breeding cow, and at one time, 85 percent of the farm’s herd traced their lineage back to her.
The family almost called the store Seven Sisters Ice Cream after the iconic peaks in the Holyoke Range, which can be seen from the store. Then a friend of Cook’s wife, Beth, making a play on words with the cow Fayvor’s name, wrote to say “good luck with Flayvor’s new ice cream stand.”
“And as soon as we saw it,” Cook recalled, “we thought, ‘Jesus Christmas — Flayvors of Cook Farm — that’s it!’”
The farm is a family affair, powered by the hard work of several generations of Cooks. Beth Cook was the force behind Flayvors ice cream from the beginning, pitching it as a way to expand the business as their son, Hank, returned to work on the farm.
“I knew she’d always envisioned an ice cream stand,” her husband said. Their grand post-and-beam-building went up in 1998, and somewhat to Cook’s surprise, “It was like that movie ‘Field of Dreams’: ‘If you build it, they will come,’ and they have.”
Often, what customers come for is Flayvors’ homemade ice cream. Cook Farm lacks the expensive infrastructure needed to pasteurize its milk before making the ice cream, so the farmers send it out to a processor and receive back an ice cream base that’s a blend of theirs and other local producers’ milk. After that, from recipe formulation to taste-testing to making each batch, “every bit of our ice cream is made in-house,” Cook says.
Theirs is a rich, “premium” ice cream with 14 percent fat content and bold flavors, including some novel ones like “Hadley Grass,” a seasonal asparagus-flavored ice cream available now that’s gained some local fame.
The two cows on the Flayvors sign each have a flavor named after them, too. Inez, the black and white Holstein, shares her name with a vanilla ice cream with chocolate chunks and almonds, while the brown Jersey, Ginger, inspired a ginger flavor.
Quality ingredients are important to the process, Cook says. “Our feeling is if people get a great ice cream cone, they’ll appreciate it, but if they get a cheap ice cream cone, they’ll forget about it. Our quality is what people travel out here to enjoy. And we use a very consistent recipe, so if you like our ice cream, you’ll like it the next time, too.”
Customers can find lunch items, the farm’s own beef and raw milk, and products from other local farms at Flayvors as well. Currently, the store is configured for ordering safely in person or online at flayvors.com.
Cook Farm’s cream-on-top raw milk is bottled on the farm in clean glass jugs without pasteurization or homogenization. It is richer than most store-bought milk, owing to the 25 Jersey cows among the farm’s dairy herd of 70.
Beef is available in the store year-round.
“Come the fall, we’ll start selling some Wagyu beef we’ve been raising,” Cook said. This breed of Japanese beef cattle is prized for its deeply marbled meat.
For many years, matriarch Beth was the public face of Flayvors, the store she founded. But the guard is changing, with her daughter-in-law, Deborah, taking over the reins, assisted by her own children.
“Deborah is the mother of five kids, a full-time public school teacher and department head, and she manages Flayvors,” Cook marveled. “She’s an unbelievable mainstay for our family business.”
Out on the farm, a similar transition is occurring as Deborah’s husband, Hank, the son who returned, takes on more responsibility from his father, Gordie. These days, Hank is primarily responsible for taking care of and growing feed for their combined herd of 200 cows. Says the elder Cook, “When I say ‘we,’ more often than not I mean Hank.”
As Hank explains, almost all their cows’ feed is grown on 200 acres they own or rent from neighbors, including parcels rented from Hampshire and Amherst Colleges. Using primarily no-till practices and a calculated rotation of crops, they raise corn for silage and a wheat-rye hybrid known as triticale.
This season is a busy time in the fields, as triticale needs to be harvested and corn planted. The younger Cook shared his thoughts on a break from baling triticale hay.
Gordie Cook is adamant in acknowledging the roles that other family members have played in Cook Farm over the years. Each of his four children has contributed in some way, as have many of their 11 grandchildren, especially those raised by Hank and Deborah on the farm. It seems there will be Cooks in the kitchen and in the fields for years to come.
Flayvors of Cook Farm is open every day from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on South Maple Street in Hadley. Learn more about them and find more local farm stands and ice cream options near you at buylocalfood.org/find-it-locally.
Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator at CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture).