Are there children involved?
When I was a kid we had a hand crank ice cream mixer. Best ice cream you ever had. But you had to crank it for like a half hour (or whatever, I was a little kid). Now that I think of it, it only came out when there were gatherings with a bunch of little kids. Could it be that the parents were using this device to keep us kids busy and worn out during their party?
LOL! My husband’s family had one of those crank ice cream makers, and he has very fond memories of it! There were six kids, so it wasn’t that much of a chore ;-)
Another cool thing for parties, is getting people to make butter out of cream; just pass the jar around for shaking:
https://delishably.com/dairy/How-to-Make-Butter-in-a-Jar
-JT