On the porch of a piedmont farmhouse in North Carolina. That’s where it all started, beneath the watch of Granny’s two black wooden roosters. In the southern summers my family would gather on Sundays for a day of rest and re-connection. And ice cream. Neighbors would come over to share bounty from their garden for the next batch and sit a spell. We would sit for hours talking, laughing, story-swapping and painfully yet lovingly taking turns on that ole rock salt machine. We kids lived for that exact moment of approval when the slurry turned to scoops, our arms no longer fit for the churning, and the reward for our deeds became the epitome of happiness.