...starts in 1976. Hobart D. Smith opened Bart's Homemade in downtown Northampton, MA. Hobart had two claims to fame before he left for Martha's Vineyard, he was the first person to put Heath Bars in his packaged ice cream, and he sold Bart's Homemade to Barbara Fingold and Gary Schaefer in 1978. Well, Barbara and Gary are still the owners, and Bart's remains one of the few Super Premium ice cream to still use real Heath Bars in packaged ice cream.

In the early days Gary made all of the ice cream in a batch freezer, two and a half gallons at a time, in the front window of the store. In 1981, Bart's opened a second store in Amherst, MA, and Gary could no longer do it all. They hired Kevin Kearns, a recent Amherst College grad looking for a local company to grow with. Kevin stayed for 20 years and now David Raymond, who trained with Kevin, has taken over making the ice cream.

Bart's took another major step in 1983, purchasing Snow's Nice Cream Company in Greenfield, MA. Snow's has been making ice cream since 1910, and has been at the current site since 1926. With a continuous freezer replacing the batch freezer (used now exclusively for research and development), we are able to control the amount of air (over-run) in the product. This move allowed Bart's to enter the Super Premium pint market. Stop & Shop and Big Y Supermarkets started carrying our pints, and it was not long before Bart's had become the third largest seller of Super Premium ice cream in the New England market, behind Ben & Jerry's and Haagen Dazs.

Even though Bart's Homemade was selling a lot of ice cream, we eventually had to pull out of the supermarket business due to a lack of money to pay for the major slotting fees and advertising required by the large supermarkets. This move allowed us to refocus the company, and decide what we really wanted our mission to be.

We wanted to continue to produce a high quality, 16% butterfat, all natural product that tasted great. We also wanted to continue in the Snow's tradition of making a premium, 12% butterfat product in half-gallons and 3 gallon tubs for restaurants and food service. These were givens, but it was also at this point that we decided we also wanted to directly support a sustainable, independent future for the Connecticut River Valley and the surrounding region. We started to focus on local sales and the distribution of other products in addition to our own.

This commitment blossomed into the creation of Connecticut River Valley Foods, as we sought to find, promote, and distribute regional food products. Products like Chubby's Salsa & Bar-B-Q sauce, Myron's Sauces, Smith's Country Gouda & Cheddar Cheese, New Salem Tea Breads, Hillside Organic Pizzas, Hot Mamma's Hummus & Pesto Sauces, and Zuzzy's Cookie Dough Batter were added to our product line.

Taking our commitment a step further, we began searching for rbST free milk for our ice cream and organic milk to manufacture an organic ice cream. Eventually we purchased milk from the Organic Cow of Vermont, then owned by Hood. In 1996 we produced our first certified organic low fat ice cream in four flavors: Vanilla, Cappuccino Fudge, Raspberry Chunk, and Chocolate Raspberry. With almost the same great taste of Bart's traditional super premium, our low fat organic ice cream has less than three grams of fat per serving while keeping a refreshingly strong ice cream taste. Unfortunately, Hood sold the Organic cow and we lost our supply of organic milk, ending our low fat organic ice cream.

The logical next step was to bring everything even a bit closer to home. So, in 1997, we helped create, then administer, the Pioneer Valley Milk Marketing Cooperative of Western Mass – eight farms selling their rbST free milk as Our Family Farms Milk. Together, these farms milk 322 cows, farm 1750 acres, have been farming for 960 years, and have used zero rbST!

We have worked with Our Family Farms for several years, through two attempts to jointly build a dairy processing plant. The goal is to own a facility which can bottle Our Family Farms' milk and other dairy products, and also make an ice cream mix with only their milk and cream.

This is a multiple million dollar process, and since we are determined to retain local control, we have not yet found the right funding mechanism to make it work. As of March 2007 we have a new opportunity to build this plant, and will keep you informed as to its progress.