This Page Amounts to a Hilltop o’Beans
Hilltop Farm Creamery, Suffield
October 2024
It wasn’t until after I visited and written half this page that I learned this place does not make its own ice cream. Sad face emoji.
Hilltop Farm was built by Indian Motorcycle co-founder, George Hendee, starting in 1913, as a gentleman’s retirement farm.
We should all have our own gentleman’s retirement farms. And they should all be as beautiful as Hilltop Farm in Suffield.
Through various efforts on the part of the town and The The Friends of the Farm at Hilltop (FOFAH), the barn, outbuildings, and grounds have been not just saved, but restored and improved as well.
And in 2022, the farm opened its creamery. And its creamery… hold up. Why do they call this a creamery? They don’t make their own ice cream?!
About 20 flavors are currently offered, made by Gifford’s Ice Cream of Maine and Bliss Ice Cream of Attleboro, Mass.
This was mentioned in a 2022 Patch article about its grand opening. I could not find anything noting this on the Creamery’s own web presence. I’m more annoyed at this than you’d imagine, as I really do try to keep my “CT Homemade Ice Cream Trail” ice cream places actual Connecticut homemade ice cream places. Doing so is difficult to be sure, but I try.
I will continue and publish this page for three reasons: It’s a great setting for ice cream and the farm itself is CTMQ-worthy, they DO use Suffield’s own Hastings Farm milk in their milkshakes (my loophole for inclusion), and, well, I drove up here for the express purpose of having an ice cream cone and took pictures and wrote half this page and…
Here we are.
Eating either Gifford’s or Bliss ice cream. I have no idea. The shop is cute. I visited on an October Wednesday after work and still saw five other customers roll through in the short time I spent here. After poking around the few non-ice cream items for sale, I ordered my “Dirty Coffee” cone and absconded outside.
It’s crazy to realize that the massive Six Flags in Agawam, MA is only a mile north of this bucolic setting.
Ooh! Another “homemade” loophole. In 2022, the owners said they plan on making homemade gelato! Alas, I see no evidence of that late in the 2024 ice cream season. Maybe they tried and failed or maybe they still plan to in the future or maybe the owner said that just to get me up here.
My Massachusetts or Maine ice cream was delicous and less than six bucks for two heavy scoops. The young woman who served me was an expert scooper to be sure. My mild complaint was that the paper wrap at the bottom of my sugar cone had melded with the cone and I couldn’t eat my last few bites.
Is that a complaint I’d mention if this place were a true homemade ice cream joint? No. It is not.
But that’s what a non-Connecticut place gets from me.
Hilltop seems to always have a few sugar-free and lactose-free options, as well as frozen yogurt and sherbet options as well.
I can’t officially endorse a non-Connecticut made ice cream place on CTMQ, but if you asked me what to do in Suffield in a darkened alleyway someday, I’d probably whisper something about the delicious ice cream in a great setting at Hilltop Farm. But you didn’t hear that from me.
Hilltop Creamery (Facebook Page)
CTMQ’s Homemade Ice Cream Trail
CTMQ’s visit to the farm proper
CTMQ hikes the Hilltop Farm trail
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