Thank you for this summer

The real story of an ice-cream kiosk rarely begins with polished menus and perfectly arranged chairs. It begins with someone carrying a planter, someone looking for the right place for a table, someone wiping down a surface that will soon hold sticky children’s hands, coffee cups and melting ice cream.

In summer 2026, the hatch in the dairy wall opened for the first time. On Fridays and Saturdays it became a small pause at Margaretelund: a place where a visit could stretch out, where children could discover the animals behind the fence and adults could have coffee in the sun.

The ice-cream kiosk is now closed for the season. But the experience left us wanting more. We are looking forward to next summer and hope the hatch in the dairy wall opens again – not as a grand attraction, but as a small ritual: a scoop of ice cream, a moment in the courtyard and the feeling of having found something almost entirely your own.

It matters to say that the ice cream is not made at Margaretelund. It comes from Ryssbyglass outside Nässjö, where Eva and Hans make ice cream from milk from their own cows and follow the wonderfully simple motto “only good things”. In a shop built around northern Småland terroir, it does not feel borrowed. It feels like the same landscape speaking in another form.

The selection was deliberately narrow. Three regular flavours and one bonus flavour. Dulce de leche, because the name is a little difficult to say and the taste is easy to love. Cream or vanilla for the pure, milky note. Strawberry sorbet for summer. And then a fourth flavour that could change, like a small surprise through the hatch.

There were no sprinkles and no sauces. This was said without apology. Those things are useful when you need to hide the taste of bad soft serve. Ryssby ice cream needs no hiding. It could stand there in a cup or in Margaretelund’s own handmade gluten-free cone and carry the experience on its own.

It is precisely the modesty that makes the kiosk interesting as a destination. Not because it shouts for attention, but because it makes it possible to stay. A German family passing through Småland. A Dutch couple with a map, a coffee craving and plenty of time. A local family who already knows the road. All of them can happen upon the same little place behind the dairy and feel it was almost only theirs.

Now that the season is over, the memory remains: a hatch in the wooden wall, a queue in no hurry, a scoop of Ryssby ice cream in the sun and a few goats very deliberately pretending they were not trying to become part of the story.

“The ice-cream kiosk should not hide the flavour. It should simply give summer a place to stay.”