Well, now, it's even better, as we're happy to announce that in partnership with North Andover's only authentic New England sugar house, Turtle Lane Maple Farm, we're now using real North Andover produced Maple Syrup in our delicious Maple Walnut ice cream.

Turtle Lane Maple Farm produces a wonderful, dark amber syrup from trees grown right here in North Andover. They have a very nice setup, you can visit their website for more information (turtlelanemaplefarm.com), or stop on by their sugar house during the season, and take a tour of their farm.

So come on by and try a cone -- we think you'll find it's the best Maple Walnut you'll find.

UPDATE: Response to our offer has been a little overwhelming, and we're committed to buying over 290 boxes as of now, which is way more than we need. So please don't sign us up for any more cookies -- if you didn't sell any to us this year, you can get us next year!

Thanks!

<Steve & Maggie>

It's Girl Scout Cookie time, and Mad Maggie's is buying!

We use lots of Thin Mint cookies in our Mint Cookie flavor, so we're always eager to buy cookies.

Rather than buy all of our cookies from one scout, we like to spread our buying around, so here's the offer: Any Girl Scout is welcome to sign us up to buy two boxes of Thin Mints. Sign us up, drop off the cookies at the store when they come in, and we'll gladly buy them from you.

If you can, send us an email or call to let us know you've signed us up, but if you don't, that's ok, we'll still buy all the cookies we can get our greedy little hands on!

We had planned to keep our North Reading location open through the end of September, but we've regretfully had to close it, as our landlord has raised the rent to the point where we simply can't hope to turn a profit there.

We sincerely apologize for the short notice on this, and wish to thank our loyal customers at our North Reading location for their support over our five seasons there.

We're already looking at a couple of new locations in the North Reading area, so keep an eye on our website for information on where you can find us in the spring.

And, don't forget, if you don't mind a short trip, our North Andover location will be open all winter long, so you'll still be able to find some of the best ice cream available. Come on by and check out the new location!

Our North Andover location is now open, and we've gone from having too many team members for one location to not enough to keep just the North Andover location fully staffed.

So, we're actively looking to add a handful of new team members. With schools restarting soon, we have plenty of help on the weekends, and really need to add others who are willing to commit to working a night or two each week during the school year.

If you submitted an application earlier in the spring, please don't be bashful about emailing or calling to let us know you're still available, and are willing to work weeknights.

And if you didn't submit an application because you thought there were too many ahead of you in applying, now's the time to jump to the head of the line!

So, if you're older than 16, willing to work weeknights, and meet all of our other requirements, we'd love to hear from you! Head on over to our Jobs Page for lots of information on our application process.

Our North Andover location is complete, and we've received all of the necessary town approvals, so we'll be open for business, as of tonight!

We have limited flavors as of now, but are working furiously to get our freezers full. Come on by and try your luck to see if we've made it to your favorite yet!

Our North Andover location is nearing completion, and should be open within the week.

We've been busy painting, tiling, setting up equipment, and ordering supplies, and after way more delays than we expected, we really think we'll be ready to open sometime around the 15th of July.

The last remaining items are the completion of our walk in freezers, the refinishing of the floors (which were not installed correctly the first time -- Grrr!) and the installation of our indoor counters. We're hopeful that we can get all of these accomplished this week, and get our final sign offs from the town. (Then again, we've been hopeful before, and everything seems to take longer than you expect!)

When we are ready, we'll likely "soft open", meaning we won't do a lot of advertising, we'll just turn on the Open sign and start taking orders. Hopefully this will give our serving team some time to ramp up their learning curve on how the layout of the store works, and how to best serve our customers quickly.

Speaking of our serving team -- we've got a great one! We hired a core team of six who've been working in North Reading, and just hired six more who will be jumping into the fray this week.

I've got to say, we've been extremely fortunate to find a great group of kids, and I think our customers are going to be very pleased with them. At this point, I'd guess we have about two thirds of the team as North Andover locals, with a few Andover kids mixed in, so you North Andover natives should see quite a few familiar faces when you come by.

We sure hope to see you all soon -- if you see the lights on at night, don't be afraid to pop in and say hi!

We're now booking dates for summer ice cream parties.

We've done several on site ice cream parties for companies and organizations in the area, and they're always a big hit. We can provide ice cream only, or a full ice cream sundae party.

We have limited capacity to book these, as we have only a single catering cart, and need to schedule them carefully so as to not overbook, so reserve your date today!

So, why not reward your employees or members with some of the best homemade ice cream in the area? Don't delay, contact us today for availability and pricing!

We've got a couple of new flavors in stock for the first time:

Rum Raisin

We might need to check IDs of those ordering this one! Sweet, golden raisin, soaked in dark rum, and mixed into a lightly flavored rum base.

Vanilla Fudge Stripe

Vanilla base, with a thick stripe of marbling fudge, and Keebler's mini fudge-striped cookies.

The weekend forecast is a good one -- come on by and tell us what you think of these!

We officially opened our North Reading stand last Friday, but with the rain and the cool, we really haven't been open much this first week, so today is really our first day of full operation.

We have only limited flavors on hand at this point, but we're furiously working our way down last year's popularity list, so hopefully we'll have a full flavor lineup soon.

If you come by and we don't have your favorite, make sure to ask us for it and maybe we'll adjust our production schedule to make it sooner!

Hope to see you at the store soon!

We've been busily cleaning our North Reading store in preparation for the upcoming season, and things are getting close.

We're hoping to have everything ready to open on Friday night, April 6th, although we'll see whether we have time to actually make some ice cream before then!

If you see the lights on at night while we're cleaning, feel free to stop in and say hello. Maybe we'll even surprise you with some early season samples!

Mad Maggie's is elated to announce that we're moving to a brand new location!

We've leased the new building at 1025 Osgood Street, North Andover, on the site previously run by Treadwell's ice cream. While it's intimidating to think of replacing a local icon, we're excited at the opportunity, and confident that we'll be able to win people over with our award winning flavors and exceptional service (hopefully, even those folks who are disappointed to see Treadwells disappear...)

Plans are to be open for business sometime in April. We'll post an update as construction gets nearer to completion, and we have a better idea of when we'll have all of the fixtures and equipment in place.

We'll have plenty of new job openings at this new location, so if you're looking for a job for the summer, please visit our jobs page and download an application!

Plans for our North Reading location are still up in the air, but we're hopeful that we'll be able to open (possibly on a more limited basis) this summer as well.

We use real Girl Scout "Thin Mints" in our Mint Cookie ice cream -- at least, while we have them on hand. Some years, we run out of them by mid-summer, and have to resort to using "Grasshoppers" instead!

For those of our loyal customers who are in the Girl Scouts, we extend this offer: Put Mad Maggie's down for two boxes of Thin Mints this year! We're happy to help out our scouting friends!

You can either email us to let us know you've done this (we'll mail you a check for the cookies), or just bring them to the store in the spring when we open and we'll pay you then.

Hopefully, that keeps us in Girl Scout cookies all summer!

Even though were not open, we're trying something new this year. Due to clamoring from some of our most loyal customers, we're offering ice cream pies for the Thanksgiving holiday.

We'll only have limited flavors available, and pies will only be made to order -- it's doubtful that we'll have extras if you forget, so don't delay!

Full details can be found on our ordering page.

Well, we're officially closed for the season! We finished scooping the last of the ice cream on Wednesday night, and turned off the lights for the winter.

My sincere thanks to all of our wonderful customers who've supported us over the summer, and especially to my serving team, who did another amazing job of keeping the store running and the ice cream flowing. I couldn't possibly run the store without them, and I'm really going to miss being around them day by day.

We still have a little cleaning and storing to finish, so I'll be in the store over the next few days boxing things up, so if you see the lights on, don't be afraid to stop in and say so long!

Wishing everyone a fun, safe, happy, fall and winter!

We'll be closing for the winter sometime in the next week. At this point we've stopped making ice cream, and we'll shut down as soon as the last of our existing stock is sold.

To help clear out our remaining flavors, we're offering the following discounts on all handpacked pints, quarts, and half gallons:

• As of today, 15% off.
• Starting Sunday, September 24th, 25% off.
• Starting Wednesday, September 27th, buy one, get one free.

We still have a good selection of flavors, but once a flavor is gone, it's gone for the season, so don't delay in stocking up for the winter!

Unlike past years, where we've given away any remaining flavors during the final two nights, we're planning to donate any remaining ice cream to local charitable groups.

In cooperation with St. Theresa's parish in North Reading, Mad Maggie's participated in a blood drive by the New England Red Cross.

Every participating donor received a coupon for a pint of Mad Maggie's ice cream, to be redeemed at the store. We printed out 90 certificates, and our contact at the Red Cross tells us that they gave out all but one certificate, making it a very successful drive.

As of closing time at the store last evening, we had already had 18 of the certificates turned in as donors came to claim their free pint.

Hopefully, our ice cream incentive helped to bring in a few more donors for this worthy cause, and we're delighted to have been able to play a tiny part in making this drive successful.

We're happy to announce that the newly (or, at least, recently...) remodeled Horseshoe Grille, on Route 28 in North Reading, is now carrying Mad Maggie's ice cream pies on its dessert menu.

Plans are to create a different flavor of the week each week through the summer, so make sure to stop in soon for some great barbecue and a huge slice of delicious ice cream pie for dessert!

Well, the floodwaters have receded, and we're now reopened.

We lost a bit of ice cream, as one of our freezers was flooded, and another lost power. But all in all, we came out better than we expected we would at the height of the floods.

We've got most flavors back in stock, though our soft serve machine hasn't yet been cleaned and re-assembled, we'll try to get that back up this weekend.

A huge Thanks! to everyone who offered help and words of encouragement.

And a plea: This has hit us pretty badly in the financial end. We really need some cash flow to get over the early season startup expenses. So PLEASE, come on out and have an ice cream. And bring a friend (or six!)

<Steve & Maggie>

We've been a little busy at the store this spring, and have neglected to publish our normal set of photo albums of snapshots taken around the store. We received a couple of emails from customers asking where they were, so we spent a bit of time uploading new photos, and those from April and May of 2006 are now online.

Head on over to our photo gallery to see the newest shots from the store.

While most of our competitors use a low end soft serve mix containing 5% butterfat (hence, they can't call it "ice cream"), we are proud to be using the best soft serve mix we have found -- a 10% butterfat custard mix.

Now "custard" is a product that's extremely popular in the midwest, especially in the Ohio area. It's a much creamier product than the standard soft serve products that you'll find at most ice cream stores in New England. We think it's the perfect premium soft serve complement to our premium homemade ice cream.

Don't take our word for it -- come on by and ask for a taste! We're confident that you'll agree with our opinion that it's the best tasting soft serve you've ever tasted.

^*By definition, custard contains egg products, so please be aware of this if you have an egg allergy.

With the weather warming up, we're getting that hankering to get in and start up our ice cream production.

As things stand, our plans are to open on Saturday, April 1st. We've got a lot of our cleaning and reorganizing complete, so possibly we'll have ice cream to sell this weekend, March 25th-26th.

So keep your fingers crossed that the weather cooperates, and we'll hopefully be serving some great ice cream real soon.

One of my winter projects has been to rework our website to use some better technology, and today, on Superbowl Sunday, I'm putting the new site in place for the first time.

The old site was mostly a collection of HTML pages that I hand-updated as I thought of things to add. Taking stock of it at the tail end of the 2005 season, I was a bit embarassed to see how ragged a lot of the site had become, so I've spent my nights at home over the past couple of months reworking things.

While most of the site is similar to the old site, things are much better organized on the back end, which should both make things easier to maintain, and make it simpler for me to add some new tools. One of these, our new guest book application, is in place now. I've also updated our mailing list page, which should make it easier for me to keep up to date on things like sending out birthday coupons.

The site has been tested mostly with the Firefox web browser, but daughter Amanda also did some QA for me using Safari, the Mac browser, so that should also work. In some brief testing, all pages seem to work with Internet Explorer as well, though I can't promise that all of the font layouts are as nice. Take my advice, ditch IE and install Firefox, you'll be happy that you did.

If you find anything not working correctly, I'd appreciate if you'd to let me know.

We again entered into the flavor competition at the National Ice Cream Retailers Association in Scottsdale, Arizona in November.

In the Strawberry competition, while no Blue Ribbons were given to any of the contestants, we were awarded a Red Ribbon for our Strawberry ice cream, receiving the highest score of all entrants.

Our Vanilla Bean also received recognition with the award of a White Ribbon.

Breaking news: We've negotiated a deal with our landlord that will allow us to make a small amount of ice cream throughout the winter off season. We won't be selling cones at the window, but we likely will be able to sell pre-packed pints and quarts in limited flavors.

Check back soon for more news on this. We're planning to make some traditional holiday favorites like Vanilla, Chocolate, Peppermint Stick, and of course, our hit Pumpkin Gingersnap flavors, but feel free to to request specific flavors that you'd like to see available through the fall. We'll also be making holiday ice cream pies on a pre-order basis, so email your requests early if you would like something special for your Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas celebration!

As hard as it is to believe, our 2005 season is over, and the stand is now closed for the winter! This has been a very rewarding season for us, as we received quite a bit of recognition in the press, and we grew the business for the third straight season. Thank you to all of our wonderful customers for your support throughout the year!

We're planning to reopen sometime around the first week of April in the spring. Wishing everyone a great winter, and hope to see you in April!

With many of our serving team leaving for colleges, we expect to have a few open spots in the spring, so visit our jobs page to get the inside scoop on jobs for next season!

At the end of previous years, we've given away the remaining stocks of ice cream. This year, we decided to try to use the end of the year surplus to help raise some money. Andover Youth Services was happy to assist, and we ran a promotion offering a free quart of ice cream to anyone making a minimum $5 donation to AYS.

On Tuesday, September 27th, Bill Fahey, Suzie Clarke, Tony Lombardi, and Glenn Wilson were on hand at the store to help sell (and scoop!) quarts of ice cream as part of this promotion. At the end of the night, we counted up the contributions, and found that we had raised $1,280 for AYS!

We're thrilled to have been able to help AYS in their mission to build a new Youth Center for the children of Andover, and we sincerely thank all of our wonderful customers who contributed to the cause!

We're still waiting on our summer T-shirt design, but while we're waiting, we've set up a couple of items in our store on CafePress.com. Take a look at our new "Chill Out" summer T, and our very snazzy Flavors Mug over at http://www.cafepress.com/madmaggies/

We were flattered to learn that Boston Magazine has has named us as one of Boston's top 25 "Most Beloved" ice cream shops in their July issue! They messed up the names of our flavors a bit, but we can forgive them for that one! We're as proud as can be to receive this honor. Please congratulate my kids if you're at our stand -- they're a huge part of what Boston Magazine calls "an enthusiastic staff" and they deserve a big slice of the credit for this nice recognition.

We held our 2nd annual "Pajama Party" on June 27th, and fun was had by all! You can view some of the photos from the celebration right here!

Unfortunately, we had a little trouble with our digital camera, so we had to get some of the photos developed. When they get back from the processing center, we'll post them as well, and we'll pick the best, worst, and silliest as prize winners. Sorry for the delay!

We've had several kids come to the window looking for cards for our summer reading program. Unfortunately, we don't have any, as this year we just sent the electronic versions of the cards to the schools, and asked them to handle the printing and distribution.

The message seems to have gotten mixed up though, as a few kids have told us that they were told to come to the store to get their cards. So, for those who didn't get a card from their school, you can download a copy of the card here:

• Microsoft Word Format
• PDF Format

We've had many customers inquire about the informal ice cream tours that we offer, and ask if we had a birthday party package. Well, now we do! Check out our birthday parties page for details. And book early! We have limited slots to offer these, and new ideas for a unique birthday party experience are hard to come by. So don't delay, book yours today!

Our award winning Double Dark Chocolate flavor is in stock, and we are making a supply so that everyone who wants some can try it.

The Chocolate that we normally make for the store is a milk chocolate. Double Dark is a richer, darker, more intense chocolate -- about halfway between our normal Chocolate and our Ultimate Chocolate.

Come on in and try a taste! Tell us you saw it on the website, and we'll even give you 75 cents off!

We opened for the season on April 2nd. It poured rain for the first two days, but what else can you expect? Every year so far, it's rained on our opening weekend, but it looks like this is only a short setback, as the weather since then has been clear, if a little cool.

Make sure to stop by and say "Hi"!

Three weeks of cleaning, making ice cream, fixing whatever was broken during the winter, and just generally trying to get things set up for business, we're ready!

We'll be open for the season as of Saturday, April 1st. We have about 24 flavors in stock, and are furiously working on other flavors, roughly in order of their popularity last season.

We don't have our new awning yet, and our soft serve machine is not yet hooked up, as we're waiting on a service call, but we still have a lot of great flavors, and we're excited to be be starting a new season. Hope to see you soon!

When our customers brag that we have the best ice cream in the area, we are flattered, but try not to let that idea go to our heads. Now, however, there's some proof behind those claims.

In November, at the annual convention of the National Ice Cream Retailers Association in Orlando, Florida, we were awarded a Blue Ribbon (first place) for our Chocolate ice cream, and a Red Ribbon (runner up) for our Vanilla. Considering the prestigious list of other members who we were competing with, we're extremely excited by these awards, and thrilled to be mentioned in the same class as some of our more established competitors in our first year of entering this competition.

2004 was a difficult year for us. The season started out great, but with the cool weather, a lot of freezer problems, road construction that kept daytime traffic low, and high prices on dairy mix, rent, and wages, it's a bit disappointing to look at our bank account. Still, we're planning to be back in the spring, although we can't promise we'll be in exactly the same location, as we need to find a spot where we can build more traffic to make the business viable. Stay tuned for updates throughout the winter.

We held our final party of the year on September 17th. Unfortunately, my knack for choosing nasty weather days for these events held true, and we got rained on again!

Even so, we still had some fun. Check out our photo page for a few shots of the action from Mad Maggie's "Early" Halloween Party.

Be sure to also check out the photos from our other Summer 2004 parties: our Summer Pajama Party and our Summer Luau while you're here! And send me feedback on which of these you liked the best, so we can know which ones to try again next summer!

Win a Year's Worth of Free Ice Cream for 2005!

Entry in our final contest to guess the total volume of ice cream that we produced in 2004 is closed, and we're pleased to announce John Howell of Andover as the winner of one free ice cream for each week of the summer in 2005. John came the closest to the actual production number.

We had a lot of entries, and I'm embarrassed to admit that I gave a lot of people bad advice: I told a lot of people that the number likely had 6 digits, and started with a '2'. Now that I've actually done the math, it looks like I was a bit off there. Sorry! Thanks to everyone who participated, hopefully we'll do a better job of running this next season.

Our summer reading program, "Mad About Reading", designed to encourage kids to read during their summer break has also completed. We ended up giving away 243 cones to kids who read eight books over the summer. The number one school ended up being the E. Ethel Little School, with 57 cards turned in. Great job by everyone!

Lydia, of Bancroft School in Andover, was our first customer to claim a free cone for completing her card. A big shout out to Lydia!

We offered free reading cards to all of the elementary schools in Andover and North Reading. Most of the Andover schools chose to participate, as well as the E.Ethel Little School (my alma mater!) in North Reading. If you enjoyed this program, please make sure to mention it to your child's school principal and tell them to sign up again in the spring!