Milk, eggs, fruit – who says ice cream isn’t a health food? And one of the best places on Delmarva to find great ice cream is Hopkins Farm Creamery.

More than a roadside ice cream stand, it’s a working dairy farm. Talk about eating locavore; you can’t get much closer to the source than here. The four-footed (I guess to be technically correct, it’s four- hooved) suppliers of the basic raw material lounge on straw and chew their cud in long sheds behind the store. When it’s time for the cows to be turned out for grazing, traffic on Dairy Farm Road halts while the Holsteins amble across the road to their pasture. The cows are grass-fed and hormone-free, and the Hopkins’ are committed to providing a safe, protected environment for their livestock.

Green Acres Dairy Farm has been around since 1942, but the Hopkins family decided to open the creamery in 2007. Burli Hopkins, the great grandson of patriarch Alden, wanted people to get a better understanding of where their dairy products come from. What better way than to get up close and personal with the cows?

One way is to open the farm to visitors. On Monday, August 16, the Delaware Junior Holstein Association invites the public for Dairy Day. From 11-4, visitors can interact with calves, help feed the cows, learn how butter is made, and try hand-milking. Probably best not to wear flip-flops. There’s a small fee, which goes toward sending some of the kids to the national convention in Minnesota.

Some scientists say that the treatment animals receive shows up in the quality of the food they produce. The ice cream from the creamery is evidence of that! A team of enthusiastic teenagers wearing ‘cow’ aprons and big smiles scoop orders of the basic flavors, along with Cappuccino Delight, Rum Raisin, Apple Pie, Peanut Butter Ripple, “Moo” Cookies, and Chocolate Banana Walnut. Plus milk shakes, sundaes, and root beer floats. Every lick contains 14% butterfat. I probably didn’t need to know that. Then again, I don’t care.

If strolling through the barn while finishing your cone is a bit too ‘back to the Earth” for you, there’s a play area with picnic tables on the grassy, non-cow side of the property.

Hopkins Farm Creamery is open 7 days a week, 11-11. It’s off Rt. 9/404 about 3 miles west of Rt. 1 in Lewes. The exact address is 18186 Dairy Farm Road. Look for the ice cream cone painted on the silo. www.hopkinsfarmcreamery.com