Tired of long, cold winters in Maine, Nutter and his father moved about 100 cows to North Carolina in the summer of 1963, when he pur-chased the farm. Today Maple View Farm is a 20-minute drive from Chapel Hill. The white clapboard farmhouse where Nutter reared five children lies at the end of a long, unpaved drive, lined by white board fence. Grass-covered pastures sprawl out in all directions like a carpet, blanketing the front yard and surrounding property. A few steps behind the house are the milking parlor and bottling building. The grain silo stands like a tall beacon rising behind the house and barns. Curious cows, the dairy Holsteins’ large eyes follow farm employees and visitors. Today Maple View Farm hosts more than cows — an ice cream parlor, dairy and milk bottling operations and a nonprofit educa-tional center. maple view farm a bovine’s life The farm’s 165 Holstein cows are milked around the clock – three times a day, each producing about nine gallons of milk. That is the equivalent of 136 glasses of milk per day per cow. Milking the entire herd takes about three hours. All of the milk is collected in a 4,000-gallon tank in the milking parlor. A cow needs to give birth to a calf every year to continuously produce milk. After calving, a cow is allowed a two-month maternity leave followed by ten months of milk-ing. Maple View’s 100 calves are raised for two years before they are artificially inseminated to produce a calf and later, milk. Twice a day, cows are fed a finely balanced mixture of corn, soybeans, citrus pulp, barley and wheat, all grown and processed on the farm. Every year 150 acres of barley and 130 acres of corn are sown and harvested for silage. The mixture is meant to increase the protein content of the milk. 91 www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
Wrightsville Beach Magazine May 2014
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