Ryan O’Hara says the peak of summer is his favorite time to be making ice cream.

That’s not just because the sweltering summer months account for most sales of the 1.3 billion gallons of ice cream Americans consume annually, according to the International Dairy Foods Association. For O’Hara, co-owner and founder with his wife, Geri-Martha O’Hara, of Big Spoon Creamery, summer is also when the orchards and brambles of Alabama’s farms are groaning with produce.

Big Spoon Creamery, which started as an ice cream stand 10 years ago and now has brick-and-mortar locations in Birmingham, Homewood and, most recently, Huntsville, makes everything in-house, O’Hara said, and sources ingredients from local farms whenever possible.