Cow to cone

HOT SPRINGS, S.D. — Melissa Holt wears many different hats between working at home on her farm and at her restaurant, Two Cows Creamery & Bistro.

“I am not only a farmer, but a chef and a big foodie,” Holt said. “Food is important to me; the freshest I can get it is from a local farm.”

Holt and her husband, Scott Roi, own a farm where they raise four A2A2 Jersey cows, pigs, yaks and chickens and grow produce. On the farm as well are a hoop house and a greenhouse with geothermal heat.

“We have dairy cows at home and a dairy plant in the basement of our shop,” Holt said. “So, we truly are a cow-to-cone operation.”

At any given time Two Cows Creamery & Bistro has 24-26 varieties of ice cream on hand, including sorbets and gelatos. In all, the ice cream and sandwich shop can make about 220 ice cream flavors.

“We are changing out our ice creams every couple of days,” Holt said. “Our top five flavors are vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, cookies ‘n cream and expresso chip.

Holt, her husband and their team of employees make ice cream 3-4 days a week. Some of their unique flavors are lemon berry cupcake, black raspberry chip and dragon fruit sorbet. Some flavors, like South Dakota Cow Pie, were created by fans of Two Cows Creamery & Bistro.

“Once a year we have the public put in flavor requests,” Holt said.” Then we pick which one we are going to make.”

Holt uses the produce from her farm and 15 other area farms to source ingredients used to create the vast menu of food and ice cream items.

“From my farm we get milk, pork, chicken and yak,” Holt said. “From my daughter’s ranch we get beef and from another local farmer we get lamb.”

Fresh produce such as herbs, potatoes, onions, carrots and garlic come from Holt’s farm and other local farms. Holt’s greenhouse and some at the other farms are underground so ingredients for items made by Two Cows Creamery & Bistro are fresh year-round.

“We make homemade patties every day,” Holt said. “We cut potatoes for fries every day, we cut lettuce, tomatoes and onions every single day, and we make garlic aioli every day. Now one of our greenhouses is giving us a slew of cucumbers and we will make our own pickles with them.”

From June through September, Holt gets most of the produce from their high tunnel greenhouse and crop fields. From October until May, Holt utilizes her underground greenhouse.

“It is growing many of the same things we grow in the summer,” Holt said. “We also grow some tropical fruit. We have a bumper crop of passion fruit coming later this year. We also have a lot of citrus fruits, dwarf banana trees, guava, figs and grapes.”

The underground greenhouse uses dirt and an aquaponics system for growing the plants. The system has tilapia fish in the water.

The underground greenhouse is geothermally heated with pipes that go 10 feet into the ground. At night, hot air is naturally pulled up from the ground and during the day, the hot air from the greenhouse is pushed back into the ground.

“Here in Hot Springs, we have all this hot water and hot ground,” Holt said. “It is a full circle system.”

The few food items that Holt is not able to get from local sources are brought in, with an emphasis on quality.

Two Cows Creamery & Bistro started when the Holts reached a point in their life where they realized they needed to grow as much of their own food as they could.

“My husband, Scott, has an auto-immune disease,” she said. “I reached a point in my chef career that was frustrating seeing what was happening in the food world.”

Holt grew up gardening and with her chef background, already knew a lot about food. Her mom grew up on a farm and taught them a lot about farming, Holt said.

“At home I was grinding my own wheat, and we have some cows, so I was making my own butter,” Holt said. “It just grew from there.”

In 2020, Holt began selling ice cream at farmer’s markets.

“In the wintertime, people kept asking for ice cream and when were we going to open up a shop,” Holt said.

“I had a son selling farm products, so (we thought) why don’t we open an ice cream shop and sell farm products from other farms,” Holt said.

With her experience of growing her own food and as a chef, Holt decided to combine her two passions and offer food as well as homemade ice cream.

“My best days are spent digging in the dirt,” Holt said. “My next favorite thing to do is our farm-to-fork dinners. I love to menu plan so they are a lot of fun.”

The first winter after opening up their restaurant, Holt decided to host their first farm-to-fork dinner as a ticket-only, themed event that occurred from October to April.

“We create it to be a little fancy,” Holt said. “Who wouldn’t want to go to a fancy French dinner in the middle of winter.”

The suppers were a hit and tickets sold out immediately. Each dinner includes an appetizer, a soup or salad, a sorbet, an entrée and a dessert. The dessert always compliments one of the custom ice cream flavors Two Cow Creamery & Bistro creates.

“It’s also a way for me to feature different local farms,” Holt said. “During the dinner, I talk about those farms and farmers. I try to make those about other farms besides mine.”

Between the ice cream, restaurant and farm-to-fork dinners, Two Cows Creamery & Bistro’s process might be labor intensive, but the quality is worth it Holt said.

“It’s so fresh that you can taste the difference,” she said. “It supports the community and that’s really important to me.”