It must be in the genes.....

Some of my fondest memories as a child going to visit my Stoltzfus grandparents were that there were always sure to be fun times to play in the barn, opportunities to wander down to the creek if the weather was good, someone to play Dutch Blitz with, and a guarantee of at least one 5 gallon drum of ice cream in the large chest freezer in the "middle room." When you are a dairy farmer, milk is a staple of life. And so ice cream is just a natural second. And any time you get a group of Stoltzfi together, you can rest assured that plenty of ice cream will be served and consumed.

As one of my aunts put together a photobook of her life, she began to dig more deeply into our family history. With all Stoltzfi in the US being descendants of Nicholas Stoltzfus, a German native, we have always thought ourselves to be mainly of German descent. However, if you look carefully at our ancestory, the vast majority of our ancestors (Beiler, Blank, Glick, Hertzler, Holly, Koenig, Mast, and Zug) were refugees from Switzerland, coming to the US because of the persecution against the Anabaptist. Many came from the Emmenthal region in the Canton of Bern.

Now let me tell you. The Swiss know how to make ice cream right. Rich and smooth with just the right amount of sweetness. My favorite to date is Waldbeeren. (Or in English, Forest Berries. Yum) You can buy the grocery store brand of ice cream and think you're eating Häagen-Dazs.

So, maybe the reason we Stoltzfi enjoy ice cream so much is because it's in the blood. We're Swiss you know.
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