DOUBLE BLUFF — Down a country lane on a sunny, cold February morning near Useless Bay, a gorgeous gleaming ice cream machine is churning away.

Florence Hecker has her plastic bouffant cap on and bounces from task to task in the small Whidbey Island Ice Cream plant she runs with her co-owner husband Ron Hecker.

Her son-in-law, Chris Johnston, whom she calls a “jack-of-all-trades plant manager,” is busy filling bright, white cardboard pints out of a machine that oozes an impossibly thick stream of “Now This Is Chocolate.” The enticingly named ice cream is just one of 45 flavors the company produces using all natural ingredients, including the 18 percent butter fat cream it gets from Lochmead Farms in Junction City, Ore.

The colorful names of each flavor are not the only thing that has proved enticing since the Heckers bought the business about two years ago. People just can’t seem to get enough of the sweet, creamy concoction.

The Heckers said they never would have imagined themselves the owners of an expanding company years ago when the previous owners, their friends Mike Rudd and Mary Stoll, asked them to help out at a few farmers markets. Things changed rather quickly though, when by 2009 both Rudd and Stoll had died from unrelated illnesses.

The Heckers just dove in head-first.

“Our business has increased by 50 percent in the past year,” Ron Hecker said.

“We have found that our customers on Whidbey Island buy almost as much of our ice cream as is sold on the mainland,” he added. “I’m just thrilled with the support which we get on the island.”

That points to an impressive amount of ice cream being consumed locally, considering the large number of retailers to which the company distributes the product off-island. From Bellingham to Tacoma, Whidbey Island Ice Cream is distributed to about 60 purveyors including grocery stores, restaurants, confectioners, cafes and hotels. Whole Foods and the Metropolitan Markets of Seattle carry it, and Seattle’s Renaissance Hotel even carries it exclusively on its room service menu.

On Whidbey Island, the ubiquitous brand is in about 32 locations, including Red Apple stores, the Star Stores, Payless Foods and Saars. That number is even higher if one includes the several catering companies that carry the brand, plus Prima Bistro restaurant in Langley and the company’s best summertime venues, the farmers markets and festival events where the familiar blue, green and white ferry logo can be seen on the company’s ice cream carts.

In addition to pints, the company also sells the ever popular ice cream bars. The bars are offered in 35 flavors, a market niche for Whidbey Island Ice Cream, and hand-dipped in dark Guittard Chocolate without additives.

“You can even get a Whidbey Island Ice Cream Bar at Sebo’s or Ace Hardware,” Hecker said.

One drill bit, one package of energy efficient light bulbs and one Triple Berry Whidbey Island Ice Cream Bar, please.

The couple is excited about a new ice-cream bar product — a package of three bars — that is almost ready to hit the market with some new packaging designed by the local company Christopher Baldwin Design.

Baldwin is also lending his designer’s eye to the new, colorful pint containers, which will remain cardboard for easy recycling. The lids, however, will change to the more tamper-resistant plastic, a demand made on the company by some of the stores selling the product.

Although the company is continuing to expand and looking toward a larger market in the Northwest, the Heckers are very much aware of keeping the company progressive.

“We try to buy and employ locally,” Hecker said.

The company buys its berries from local growers and some of its other ingredients from local farmers markets. And, if they can manage to buy the property on which the factory sits, Ron Hecker said he would like to lessen the company’s carbon footprint by incorporating wind power in the operation of the plant.

Plans are already made to recirculate and reuse all the water in the plant. This would increase efficiency considering the amount of energy it must take to power up the large walk-in freezer at the plant that hovers around 30 degrees and the beautiful, bright silver ice cream-making machines and bar-maker that are expensive enough even before they are turned on (the big one made in Italy costs as much as a luxury automobile).

But it’s all worth it, say the Heckers, who like the immediate response they get during face-to-face sales to customers at summertime farmers markets and festivals.

“It’s nice to hear all the comments, ya know? ‘This is the best ice cream we’ve ever had,’” Florence Hecker said.

“They tell us, ‘We wait every trip just to have your Chardonnay Chocolate,’” she said of one couple who make a point of going to the Ballard Farmers Market just to see them.

Although the ice cream business is a pleasant one, the Heckers said it’s hard work with consistent 12-hour days, six days per week and more than that in the summer. Last year they sold 75,000 pints and 100,000 bars.

In August, they might have to make 1,300 bars per day to fill the 17,000 bars per month demand that is common in the summer months. But, this year they will be getting a bar wrapper machine, though Florence established herself as the queen wrapper last summer.

“Florence can do 1,300 a day; incredible,” Hecker said

of his wife. “I can do 100 if I work at it. Yeah, she’s quick.”

Whidbey Island Ice Cream currently employs nine part-time and full-time employees, including one Clinton couple who distribute the product to island stores.

“We think there will be greater demand this summer, so the company will be hiring for a second shift this spring,” Hecker said.

Florence Hecker looked somewhat bemused when asked about how she ended up making ice cream six days per week and by what her “retirement years” turned out to be.

But after all, with a 50-percent increase in sales within one year, it appears that Rudd and Stoll’s legacy is going strong, thanks to a couple of semi-retired mavericks who like good ice cream.

“We didn’t want to see it go away because we knew it was good,” she said.