KEOTA

When Caleb and Benny Ahrens wheel out the tent and chest freezer to local farmers markets each week, the odds are stacked against them. Not only do folks not understand what they are selling, but they know they don’t want it.

You see, the brothers are coming from Sweet Doe farm in Keota, where their family has been raising top-of-the-line Nubian and Toggenburg milking goats for the past 25 years. It had been just a hobby farm, born of necessity when young Caleb couldn’t process cow’s milk, but lately they’ve decided to enter the dairy market. And they’ve put a lot of time and energy into creating an ice cream bar that is all-natural, tastes great, and won’t melt.

But a lot of people won’t give it a chance. Because they’ve tried goat cheese before, tasted that acidic flavor, and they aren’t into it.

The brothers call that ‘tang.’ They aren’t into it either.

“The tang isn’t necessary if you know what you’re doing,” Caleb says.

They know what they’re doing. For the past two years, they’ve invested in equipment, established a process, and worked out a recipe. It hasn’t been smooth going; there’s been a lot of trial and error. But it looks like the days of milk spraying all over, ice cream bars melting seconds after opening, and handwriting every label might be behind them.

“Even if we would have been able to go retail last year, right out of the gate, it was almost a blessing in disguise that we were building the market, because it slowed us down enough to be able to work through some of those challenges,” Caleb says.

To avoid tang, they select the best goats, feed them a careful diet, and take care with milking. Twice a day, six goats at a time head into the milk house, where a pipeline system collects milk in a tank that can be easily transported. In the processing building, cream, sugar, and stabilizers are added to the milk, and the entire ice cream base is pasteurized before the flavorings – fruit purees, chocolate, vanilla – are added. The mixture is then poured into the ice pop machine, where 120 bars take a rapid plunge down to -40°F, ensuring a smooth consistency and long shelf life for the treats.

The result is spectacular. Benny hands me a strawberry Sweet Doe Pop – “Strawberry is by far consistently the top-selling flavor,” he says – and I take my time enjoying it as we talk. It’s sweet and creamy, with a delightful chewiness; 11 minutes of chatting under the afternoon sun pass before a drip falls on my shoe.

I detect not a single note of tartness, and I’m well aware of the 24 goats grazing in the pen behind me.

“When we created that product, we wanted it so that the person who was lactose intolerant and can’t have dairy could eat it, and the regular consumer that hated goat milk would like it enough that they would purchase it,” Caleb says. “I think that’s something unique to the industry.”

It took Benny over a year of test-batching to come up with a formula that satisfied him.

“Personally, I’m a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream eater,” he says, acknowledging his bias toward the super-premium. Getting that rich and creamy consistency from goat milk is a challenge; the small fat globules require added fat and thickeners, and goat cream is extremely had to come by.

The fact that goat milk ice cream must be finessed is why you’ll very rarely find it; slightly more common is goat milk gelato, a lower-fat frozen treat.

“The thing with the ice cream is, we’re the only ones in the state that do it,” Caleb says.

Having that “only” status may seem like an advantage, and for the dairy to have this novelty, it totally is. Except when it totally isn’t.

“Our hurdle became, how do you get more people to try it? The people that do try it are instant fans, but you have that tangy-ness with the goat milk that people won’t even look at it,” Caleb says. “It’s such a niche product that nobody’s heard of, so they’re unwilling to take a chance on it. So how do you get them to come to your booth to even try it?”

Last year the brothers showed up at farmers markets everywhere from Des Moines to Davenport, Cedar Rapids to Washington. Five days a week they were out at the markets, handing out samples of Sweet Doe Pops.

“These markets were not paying the bills last year,” Caleb says, and it was frustrating given the amount of time and energy they had put into their products.

But they didn’t quit, and the hard work of last year is starting to pay dividends this year.

“The feedback was phenomenal,” Benny says. “We had instant fans just about every market. Several times a week, somebody would try it and they would just love it.”

Now those fans are reaching out, asking to stock Sweet Doe Pops at pools, concession stands and retail grocers. The health-conscious treat, which is easier to digest and contains prebiotic oligosaccharides that support gut health, is starting to catch on.

The brothers are also getting some much-needed support. A $2071.90 Choose Iowa grant is making it possible for them to invest in a freeze dryer, freeze dry stacker, ice cream maker, and popsicle molds. With these tools, they’ll be able to reduce inefficiencies and increase production, which will put them in position to supply retailers.

“We want to emphasize how much of a blessing Choose Iowa is to local producers,” Benny says. “We’ve done farm to table events where they’ve had well-known local chefs put on whole five-course meals at properties, they do farm crawls. Two weeks ago, I dropped off bars that the Soil Conservation Council ordered for a meeting in West Branch, so I got to go up there and deliver 40 bars to them and gave like a 10-minute talk to them, telling about who we are. Choose Iowa gives you opportunities to connect with people.”

Although Sweet Doe Company originally entered the market with chèvre, a fresh, spreadable goat cheese that they still produce in small batches, “We wanted to do ice cream from the get-go,” Benny says. And while they may be small now, “Overall, the goal is to be a novelty company,” he says. “That encompasses pints and bars and sandwiches and cakes and stuff like that.”

Wells Enterprises Inc., maker of Blue Bunny ice cream, put Le Mars, Iowa on the map in the 20th century with its family-owned novelty production.

Sweet Doe Company could do the same for Keota in the 21st – only this time, goats will be stars of the show.

Find Sweet Doe Pops and additional products from the goat farm on Thursday evenings, 5 p.m. – 7:30 p.m., at the Washington Farmers Market (downtown); check the Sweet Doe Company Facebook page for additional opportunities to purchase.