Adventures at the Cheshire Ice Cream Farm #countrykids

We spent a lovely few hours today at one of our favourite places, Cheshire Farm  - The Ice Cream Farm.  It is completely free to enter to see the animals and use the huge range of outdoor play equipment.  Other outdoor activities cost just £1 making it a very affordable day out. (There is also a huge indoor soft play area and a Games Loft which cost extra.) And of course there is the ice cream parlour with over forty flavours of ice cream to choose from!

Here is what we got up to...

Hopscotch.

Crazy golf which costs just £1 for nine holes and was great fun!  We even got some holes in one!

Quad Bikes which are £1 for two laps.  Freddy loved this.

the kids played on the outdoor wooden play equipment, great for testing your balance.

Kizzy tried out the Monkey Bars!!

Freddy was happy to get a helping hand from his big sister!

Swinging.

More swinging!

Freddy enjoyed practicing his skills on a digger. (£1)

Panning for Gold for £1.  We found Fool's Gold, Rose Quartz, Tiger Eye, Agate and Jasper which was bagged up for us to take home.

And of course we had to have an ice cream cone each...Raspberry Pavlova for Fred and Chocolate Fudge Cookie for Kizzy!

It is a lovely place for some outdoor fun for my Country Kids!

Making Artisan Ice Cream at The Ice Cream Farm

The Cheshire Farm's Ice Cream Farm is a wonderful attraction in the heart of the Cheshire countryside.  It is free to enter and an excellent day out for families.  Over the years, the farm has expanded and developed from a simple dairy farm to a brilliant tourist attraction for all ages.  You can come to meet the animals, such as the miniature ponies, alpacas, rabbits and pigs, watch the cows being milked and sample the delicious ice cream freshly made on site.

It also boasts Quad Bikes, Mini Golf, Adventure Playgrounds, Indoor Soft Play area, Gold Panning, a cafe, gift shop and a Games Loft, so it has something to please everyone. (Some activities are chargeable such as £1 for the quads and golf, £2.50 for 30 minutes unlimited play in the games loft and £3.50 for Crazy Daisy's Fun Factory soft play.  It is the farm's policy to provide top of the range activities at very reasonable prices.)  Kids can have parties at the Ice Cream Farm in one of the amazing themed party rooms, the Ice Cave or in The Loft.  It is a fantastic venue!

The Ice Cream parlour serves up tubs or cones of their delicious Cheshire Farm ice cream in over fifty different varieties from traditional Vanilla, to the very British Strawberries and Cream to the unique Blackcurrant and Liquorice.  My favourite is a scoop of Mocha and of Salted Caramel in a double waffle cone. Yum!

The newest attraction on the farm allows visitors to see the ice cream production process in action from the viewing gallery.  You can even make your own bespoke ice cream in the amazing Artisan Room.  We were invited for a tour of the farm and had the opportunity to have a go at making our very own ice cream using an ingenious Cattabriga machine which churns and freezes the ice cream.  The freshly churned top quality  ice cream base can be flavoured with a combination of flavours, fruits, sauces, toppings and other additions such as chocolate beans, marshmallows or biscuit crumb.  The polystyrene tub of ice cream is then blast frozen in a freezer and is ready to take home in half an hour.  The packaging keeps it in perfect condition for the journey home.

We made a fruity peach and raspberry ice cream which is absolutely stunning!  Making the ice cream is an experience in itself.  It is really fun to do and the freedom to make your very own combination of flavourings means you can make an ice cream to perfectly match any meal.  I love the idea of having a special dinner and finishing it of with a specially made ice cream that I have designed and made myself!!  It costs £10 to create and make one tub of ice cream, £15 for two, which I think is an excellent price for doing something so cool using top quality ingredients!  Children can get involved as they are supervised and assisted by a member of staff who will help them scoop the base into the tub and mix in the flavourings. Pre-booking is required.

For parents wanting a healthier,lower fat treat for their children or for those who avoid dairy products, the Cheshire Farm Ice Cream Farm have perfected an amazing frozen fruit treat, the Frozen Fruit Smoothie. Made using real fruit pulps they are churned to create an ice cream like consistency which is smooth and creamy.  The individual pots come with a spoon under the lid so they can be enjoyed straight from the tub.  We sampled a Triple Berry and a Tropical flavour Frozen Fruit Smoothie and they were delicious, intensely fruity and flavoursome. The ingredients list consists of lots of real fruit purees with a little added stabiliser to create the desired, scoopable texture.  It really is a healthy treat!

The Cheshire Farm Ice Cream Farm really is an excellent family day out with free admission and with some amazing extra activities which won't cost the earth.  It is clearly signposted from the A41 Chester/Whitchurch road and is open every day except for Christmas, Boxing day and New Year's Day.

Take a look at the website for further details:

www.cheshirefarmicecream.co.uk

Reasons to be Cheerful

I missed last week because I was too ill to a) use the laptop for any length of time or b) feel cheerful enough to find three things to smile about.

This week I am feeling better and that in itself is a reason to be cheerful!

So this week's reasons are:

1: I bought a pair of Size 12 jeans and they fit me!  I don't think I'm where I need to be in my relationship with food. My weight is still fluctuating and I'd like to be a stone lighter, but having the courage to go from the mindset of being a size 16 to a size12 is a real stepping stone in my struggle with my mental body image.  One day I will get on top of my obsession with my weight. But until then, hey, I've gone from a 16 to a 12!!

2: We had a wonderful walk around Ellesmere Lake with the kids.  It is such a lovely place and Freddy has developed a love of trees, dirt and ducks!  He takes such delight in being out and about and his zest for life just makes me smile!

3: Today I met up with the lovely ladies behind three of my favourite blogs.  My friend long time friend Lou from Bloggomy and I, drove to Cheshire Ice Cream Farm to meet up with our newfound blogging buddies Heather from SAHM Loving It and Alyson from Alyson's Blog.  Along with our littlest children, we spent a few hours enjoying the soft play area, having lunch, looking at animals and of course indulging in the mandatory pleasure of eating ice cream!

New Friends and Cute Animals

Exhausted after his fun day!

Meeting up has made me even more excited about Cybermummy.  I loved that we were all exactly how we expected us to be.  I'm sure some people who blog adopt a persona that they will not be able to live up to in real life.  With us though...what you read is what you get!  It was very reassuring to know that Tweeting translates to real life conversations. So I am looking forward to meeting the flesh and blood behind some of my other favourite blogs next month.  Exciting times!

Making Ice Cream at Cheshire Farm

Back in the Summer my 8 year old daughter Kizzy entered a competition at the Cheshire Farm Ice Cream factory, to invent your own, brand new flavour of ice cream.  Her entry was a combination of mango, pineapple, banana and orange, with swirls of fruit puree running through it.  We were totally delighted when her flavour was chosen and we were invited to go to the factory to help make a batch.

Thankfully, the weather today did not prevent us from making the journey to Cheshire and we arrived to be greeted by the director Jonathan.  We donned paper coats, shoe covers and hair nets ready to enter the factory.  Everyone was lovely and had made such an effort to make Kizzy's experience an unforgettable one.  Pots of fruit concentrates were lined up on the counter for her to sniff and identify.  The orange was amazingly pungent!  Kizzy was then invited to create her flavour by adding concentrates to the base mix of milk (fresh from the farm cows yesterday), cream and sugar.  She took great delight in dolloping and pouring the fruit, while her sister Ella mixed it with a big whisk.  After some taste tests, she came up with the perfect mix!

This bucketful of fruity goodness was poured into the bespoke ice cream making machine and Kizzy pushed the button to begin the freezing process!  It was surprisingly quick...just long enough for Kizzy to put the personalised stickers on the lids of her 2 litre tubs.  The filling of the tubs was a lot of fun.  Armed with her specialist tool (aka a wallpaper scraper), Kizzy scraped the splodging ice cream flat and swirled in fruit purees to make ripples of orange sauce.  She experimented with peach and passionfruit purees too, making six 2 litre tubs of her own bespoke Ice Cream!

The highlight for me was when, armed with a spoon, we were allowed to scrape out the remnants of the ice cream machine.  The freshly frozen, fruity ice cream was refreshing, tangy and creamy all at once.  A real triumph!  Kizzy absolutely loved making the ice cream and enjoyed being given the freedom to experiment and get creative.  We felt how Charlie must have felt in Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. 

We were given six tubs of the rippled fruity ice creams which we look forward to sharing with family and friends.  We were already big fans of the Cheshire Farm Ice Cream, we love it even more now!