This text is part of the special Pleasures notebook
What would summer be in Quebec without a good ice cream cone? We are spoiled in this area, with ice cream shops everywhere and a range of formats and flavors that would make many foreign ice cream makers green with envy. But we often ignore that, among this very wide offer, there are only a handful of places where ice cream is made from harvests or milking. So it’s time to cool your beak in a farmhouse version!
Becoming an ice cream maker is not for everyone, and certainly not for farmers and dairy producers, who already have a lot to do on their farms. However, agritourism can lead to many avenues. This is what Matis and Roxanne Marineau, two cousins who are heirs to four generations of farmers before them and to more than 100 years of work in the fields, have proven.
To get to the Marineau farm, you don’t have to travel hundreds of kilometers. You can even get there by public transportation. Located in Laval, where it is not well known that 30% of the land is agricultural, this large estate has gone through several phases since 1921. First, subsistence farming, then moving on to market gardening, to the production of dried flowers, before a return to market gardening sources and a marked shift towards agritourism.
So much so that today, the Marineau family welcomes tens of thousands of visitors from April (the first strawberries) to the end of October (the last cucurbits). And this, for the self-picking of berries, pumpkins and flowers, the purchase of vegetables and processed products, and various attractions… such as a creamery since 2021.
Country dairy
“Coming from a family of entrepreneurial farmers, I wanted to have my own project,” says Matis Marineau, who bought a street food trailer in 2021 and quickly found a calling for it. Why did you choose ice cream? “Because it’s good, especially when it’s hot!” he says. “When you come out of the field after spending hours picking berries on all fours, ice cream is tempting!”
The young man, however, had no ambition to limit himself to an ordinary ice cream shop. “Why offer ice cream from the market when you can make it from scratch with your own strawberries? I just wanted the best, and that’s what I got,” he says proudly.
With his cousin Roxanne, Matis Marineau went to find a renowned ice cream chef to design recipes. From this collaboration was born a soft strawberry ice cream, followed by two others with Tahitian vanilla and Callebaut chocolate. ice cream with strawberries, blueberries and raspberries from the farm were also created, then seasonal creations, such as gelato with cantaloupe, pumpkin, or even raspberry and white chocolate. Not to mention slushes, milkshakes and homemade “blizzards” with berry coulis.
“We only use our own fruit and whole milk from the area, which is brought to us every week and which we pasteurize and process right here,” says the entrepreneur, whose creamery is a huge success. So much so, in fact, that the small trailer from the beginning has become a building four times larger this year.
“People love our ice creams,” confirms Roxanne Marineau. “They taste them when they pick their own, then they come back to see us just to eat them. It’s simple, we sell hundreds of kilos every week, and every year, the turnover increases!” Enough to whet the appetite of those who haven’t yet tried this very special ice cream shop, right?
Small fruits for all tastes
Even though the Marineau farm is, to our knowledge, the only one to push the concept of farm ice cream this far in Quebec, it is not the only one to transform its production into frozen delights.
At the Les Petites Écores farm (Montérégie), with its varied agricultural specialties, you can get a homemade ice cream with sea buckthorn, honey and blueberries, another with haskap berries and honey, and a third with honey, fresh mint and chocolate. “We even serve a fourth with chicken livers during the tour of our facilities,” continues the farmer, who hopes to develop new flavors in the future.
At Bleuets du Vire-Crêpes, an agrotourism blueberry farm in Lévis, the farm’s ice cream shop offers a homemade soft serve… with blueberries, of course! Twisted on a cone with vanilla, it’s delicious, they say. Just like the blackcurrant and vanilla one from Cassis Monna & Filles, on Île d’Orléans. “It’s even become a flagship product in the summer,” confirms co-owner Anne Monna-Lamarre. Our marbled soft serve combines blackcurrant sorbet with Coaticook soft serve ice cream, and can be served as is or as a float with our slush blackcurrant house.
The know-how of cheesemakers
Berry farmers aren’t the only ones to indulge in the art of ice cream, however. Several Quebec cheese makers have also diversified their activities by creating ice creams with their milk. This is the case for Boréalait, an artisanal dairy in Saint-Félix-de-Dalquier, in Abitibi-Témiscamingue. The establishment produces cheeses, yogurts and soft ice cream, which comes in several versions, from cones to ice cream sandwiches.
A vision that has also been adopted by the L’Ancêtre cheese shop in Bécancour, in Centre-du-Québec. Known for its cheeses and churned butters, it has created a soft ice cream from its organic milk. “It’s a good complement to our product line, a great showcase for our brand, and it’s very popular with our dairy bar customers in the summer,” says co-owner Pascal Désilets. Cones (dipped or not in chocolate), floats and “blizzards” with coatings are some of the frozen delights made with this organic farmhouse soft ice cream.
This content was produced by the Special Publications Team of Dutyrelevant to marketing. The writing of the Duty did not take part in it.