NORWELL – It's not just summertime that Hornstra Farms  in Norwell is the hot place to be.

When the temperatures cool off and demand for creamy ice cream goes down, the farm turns its fresh cream into a different South Shore must-have: holiday eggnog.

"We add some special spices and probably put a lot more heavy cream in it than most people," owner John Hornstra said in the farm store on a recent afternoon. "People always say, 'Do you make light eggnog?' And I say, 'Uh, how much eggnog a year do you really drink?'"

The holiday drink, a mix of spices, sugar, cream and egg, is sold by the quart in the farm store in both plastic and glass gift jars.

The farm begins preparing the drink around the first week of November, and it's usually sold up to around New Year's, Hornstra said.

"We usually have enough mix and cream to make it to the first of the year," he said. "Sometimes it just depends how busy a season it is."

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Hornstra Farms makes and bottles eggnog about twice a week. Within a few hours, 500 gallons of nog can be packaged and sent to the cooler for storage.

Just through the farm store's back door, bottles clink together on a thin conveyor belt that runs from the sanitization room to where workers oversee the filling process. The bottles shuffle toward a machine that rotates them one by one, filling bottles with creamy splashes of the sweet nectar in a matter of seconds.

Immediately after each bottle is filled, a machine caps it and it's  sent to the cooler.

Behind two workers, a giant metal vat is full of hundreds of gallons of eggnog. A stirrer inside spins constantly, which Hornstra said keeps the nutmeg inside from falling to the bottom and not mixing into the drink evenly.

The farm has sold eggnog during the holidays for about 50 to 60 years – for as long as he's been alive and then some, Hornstra joked. The farm store also sells eggnog ice cream.

Other Christmas treats from the farm are decidedly newer, though, such as the farm's peppermint stick cake and peppermint stick pie Hornstra began selling a few years ago. The ice cream cakes, made up of peppermint ice cream, a layer of chocolate cake in the middle and covered with a thick chocolate glaze and frosted holly, sell quickly.

"We can't even put them on the shelf because they go so fast," Hornstra said.

Still, the classics, like the farm's eggnog, are popular with farm customers.

"People get excited about it," Hornstra said. "It's not available all year round, you know?"

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The plastic jar of eggnog costs  $4.99, while the holiday bottle costs $6.99. Both contain a quart of eggnog. The tall glass jars have season's greetings from the Hornstra family printed onto the sides.

Hornstra's eggnog is also sold in a few South Shore stores, Hornstra said, including the Cracker Barrel in Hingham, Marshfield Hills General Store, Fruit Center Marketplace in Hingham and Village Market in Scituate and Hull.

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Reach Alex Weliever at aweliever@patriotledger.com.