You’ll get quite a variety of answers when you start asking, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Especially, when you ask younger kids. For my outgoing and bubbly 6-year-old niece, the answer to that question is currently, “I want to work at an ice cream shop!”
Well, she recently got a chance to get a taste of this career path in a fast-paced way by helping at our dairy promotion snack barn during the county fair while visiting. She completed a two-hour shift with her grandma and other volunteers that entailed listening to detailed orders, filling ice cream bowls, cups, and cones, adding a wide array of toppings to each treat and delivering the dairy-good ice cream concoctions to the eager, waiting customers with her biggest smile and an unwavering, “Here you go! Enjoy!”
From those two hours of working our dairy snack barn, she now considers herself an expert at all things that involve ice cream and is anticipating her uncle’s upcoming wedding where she’ll get to practice using the ice cream machine again.
Many of us who have been involved in county dairy promotion groups or fairs have likely helped with serving ice cream before. I have been serving ice cream since I was about her age and have continued to do so every year since. To hear her utter enthusiasm for something that has become pretty routine for the rest of us gives us all a renewed appreciation for the fun task of serving up delicious dairy products to our appreciative customers and supporters.
My niece already has it on her calendar and is counting down the days until she can come help serve ice cream at the fair next summer. She is also working on coming up with a new wish after saying, “I’ve always wished to work at an ice cream shop, and now my wish came true. So, I don’t know what else to wish for now.”
I’m sure her little 6-year-old self will come up with a new, equally exciting wish very soon. In the meantime, she’ll be dreaming of her time living out her dream of working in an ice cream shop.
The author dairy farms with her parents and brother near Hawkeye, Iowa. The family milks approximately 300 head of grade Holstein cows at Windsor Valley Dairy LLC — split half and half between a double-eight parallel milking parlor and four robotic milking units. In the spring of 2020, Molly decided to take a leap and fully embrace her love for the industry by returning full time to her family’s dairy.
