The Snow Goose Produce Stand has been named “Best Roadside Stands” by lifestyle guru Martha Stewart’s magazine.

“It’s a nice honor for us and the valley,” said Snow Goose founder Mike Rust, “but it came completely out of the blue. We don’t know who inspected us, or when.”

The owners heard the news from the grandmother of Jacqueline ‘Jacq’ Perry, who manages the stand’s Fir Island Road gardens.

After seeing the July-August 2020 issue of Martha Stewart magazine, she called to ask Jacq, “isn’t this the outfit you work for?”

“We were skeptical at first, until we bought a copy of the issue,” said Rust’s daughter-in-law Erika Fairman.

“To have that kind of acknowledgement was pretty neat, but it’s ironic that we didn’t win the ice cream department,” said Rust. From hot tubs in Cabo San Lucas to the fountains of Rome, the Rust family runs into people who say, “Aren’t you those people with the ice cream place in the Skagit Valley?”

Ice cream wasn’t on the menu when Mike started selling vegetables from his one-acre garden in a granary next to Fir Island’s Brown Slough.

Then his mother and father started selling oversize ice cream cones.

“We didn’t always want to be an ice cream joint, but that became kind of a trademark,” said Rust. “It was very cagey of my mother.”

The lines for ice cream are longer than ever since customers have to stand six feet apart. Sales of vegetables, salmon and condiments are up “in a big way”, possibly because people are avoiding grocery stores.

Some of the items in demand were added by Mike’s son Vico Rust and daughter-in-law Erica, now the stand’s managers. Expanding the seafood and beer selection and striving to waste less product “keeps it interesting for ourselves as well as our customers,” Fairman said.

“People know us far and wide for ice cream but we work with all sorts of amazing farmers and food producers. We have a lot of lovely food in general.”