HALFWAY – When the time came for Carol Crowe to find a new job, she decided making and selling her own ice cream – both vegan and regular – was the way to go.

In a commercial kitchen in the basement of Halfway’s Need More Acres Farm, the Scottsville resident worked Tuesday with her daughter, Laila Crowe, 15, on a new St. Patrick’s Day flavor.

“This time of year, of course we’re thinking, ‘Well, what would be good for St. Patrick’s Day? Well, you know, you needed some kind of boozy something or other,’ ” Carol Crowe said.

A bottle of vegan Bailey’s Irish Cream sat on the counter near the clear plastic tub where the Crowes were stirring their mixture, which was made up of a vegan-friendly coconut-based dairy substitute and coffee.

The Crowes experimented with adding the Bailey’s until they found what seemed like the perfect amount.

Carol Crowe is the president of Status Crowe, which she founded in 2017.

The Irish coffee flavor is the latest addition to Status Crowe’s revolving door of flavors.

Status Crowe’s commitment to sticking mostly with locally sourced ingredients means many of the company’s flavors, like the plant-based ingredients they use, are seasonal.

“Because we’re using local berries, we buy as much as we can so that … in the winter time, you can have some berry ice cream, kind of still have the taste of summer, but once we’re out of that, we’re out of that until the berries are back in season,” she said.

Crowe estimates she’s made about 30 or 40 flavors since the company’s founding, using as many local ingredients as possible, including black raspberry cheesecake and strawberry chocolate chip.

Once the Crowes found the right ratio of ingredients for their Irish coffee ice cream, Laila Crowe poured roughly two quarts of it into an ice cream maker.

After eight minutes of the machine’s whirring, the ice cream was ready and Carol Crowe returned to the ice cream maker to pour the finished product into a clean plastic tub.

Though the flavor of the Bailey’s didn’t come through as strongly as Carol Crowe wanted in the finished ice cream, she noted that, because Bailey’s contains alcohol, the amount she can add to a non-alcoholic product is limited.

Carol Crowe home-schooled both her daughters and said that, as they grew older, she started looking for something else to do.

Crowe was a biology teacher for a homeschool cooperative and has been involved with genetic testing, genetic fingerprinting and coordinating veterinary research at Pig Improvement Co. She said she didn’t want to return to that line of work.

“I just knew I didn’t want to go back to work in an office,” she said.

Based on her family’s history of cooking together, a business built on making and selling food made sense, Carol Crowe said.

“We were kind of brainstorming and our family, we really like cooking together and just doing all sorts of things so we’ve always kind of kicked around the idea of a food-based business,” she said.

Carol Crowe decided on an ice cream business because she had plenty of experience making her own ice cream.

“I began making ice cream for the girls when they were real little and I always liked homemade ice cream and I thought, ‘Oh, that would be fun. An ice cream business would be fun. It’d be something the girls and I could do together,’ ” she said.

Carol Crowe said she decided to focus, at least in part, on vegan ice cream because she was not aware of anyone locally who was marketing a similar product.

“I was really interested in giving it a try because sometimes I think our vegan friends are kind of forgotten in our community,” she said.

She started the company in 2017 and started selling her wares at the Community Farmers Market in Bowling Green in January 2018.

Though the dead of winter is not a great time for ice cream sales, it ended up being a good time for Carol Crowe to find her footing as an ice cream manufacturer.

In the winter and spring, Crowe had plenty of time before ice cream season to improve the packaging and her formula before sales started to pick up in the warmer months.

“It allowed us to kind of work through some kinks in our production schedule and so forth,” she said.

Now, she said, Status Crowe has found a comfortable groove, selling product at Stuarto’s Olive Oil Co., Marcadito Hispano and the farmers market.

Carol Crowe said she thinks her ice cream, which is accessible to vegans and the lactose-intolerant and qualifies as a Kentucky Proud product, has found a niche market in Bowling Green. “The ones that come in, they’re really excited about it and they really like it,” she said.

– Follow Daily News reporter Jackson French on Twitter @Jackson_French or visit bgdailynews.com.