Old Tower Ice Cream Opened in Jeffersonville by Fruit Farmer

The owners of Waterman Orchards in Johnson have opened Old Tower Ice Cream in a renovated granary at 4968 Route 15 in Jeffersonville, less than 10 miles from where they grow the blueberries for their signature flavor.

The new scoop shop offers about a dozen hard ice cream flavors freshly churned on-site, as well as milkshakes, sundaes and creemees made with mix from East Hardwick’s Kingdom Creamery of Vermont, said Ben Waterman, 49, who co-owns the shop and orchard with his wife, Stacey, 50. Old Tower has seating, vintage arcade games and a jukebox, plus candy by the pound. The family’s pre-picked fruit and pasture-raised eggs are also for sale.

For blueberry lovers who want to get even closer to the source, the Johnson orchard also has an on-site scoop stand, open through the August 15 end of this year’s pick-your-own season. It serves about half a dozen flavors but always blueberry.

All the hard ice cream is made in Old Tower’s state-inspected facility in the Jeffersonville granary with organic milk and cream from Greg and Kathy Beaudoin’s dairy in the same town. Rotating flavors include chocolate; maple made with local syrup; and strawberry, which sometimes features berries from the orchard or other local growers.

The Watermans started their orchard, where they grow apples as well as berries, in 2009. Ben left his job with the Vermont Land Trust last year to focus full time on the orchard. He was also completing a major renovation of the 7,000-square-foot Jeffersonville granary, which the couple bought in 2022 and of which Old Tower is now the main tenant.

Ben said he envisioned the long-empty, “severely distressed” agricultural building as a place to market the orchard’s value-added products, create a gathering space, and “revitalize and contribute to the local economy.”