Maple View Milk: a life story

If you live in Chapel Hill and shop at the grocery store, you’ve probably seen the glass Maple View milk jars available in the dairy section. But are you familiar with the story behind the milk or conscious of the business that produces it? Us either.

The locally sourced milk comes from Maple View Farms of Hillsborough, a dairy operation that’s been selling both the reusable glass jar and the product within since 1996. Ice cream and butter are also pillars of Maple View’s product line, distributed year round to Triangle grocery stores, providing a staple in the diet of many conscious eaters.

If you think Maple View Farms is the embodiment of sustainable agriculture, then you’re not alone, but you might be incorrect. You won’t find the USDA Organic label on any Maple View products. Their dairy cows are not free range, are not fed organically and are not exempt from the eventual fate of most dairy cows: hamburgers. In fact, at the Maple View Farm Country Store, beef is sold out of the same freezer as the ice cream pints.

Should a conscious eater buy Maple View products? We set out this week to visit the farm, and to answer this question ourselves.
We talked with Robert “Farmer Bob” Nutter, the semi-retired co-owner of Maple View, about why he can’t label his products as organic.

“These people who say their milk is all organic cannot use any antibiotics on a cow,” he said.

And he’s right; USDA Organic labeling requires that animals are given no such antibiotics.

“We treat ‘em with penicillin. (When) they’ve got a sick cow, they just milk ‘em. We think that’s inhumane.”

Maple View’s altruism doesn’t end there. Seniors, students and kids are welcomed into ecologically based classrooms in the new agricultural center on-site that showcases soil science, plants, insects, nutrition and even a solar array.

When you roll up to the Country Store at Maple View Farms, eight minutes away from UNC’s campus, you can see cows grazing lazily in front of Nutter’s rustic, gated country home. But this isn’t where the milk comes from.

“Those are the dry cows out front,” explains Farmer Bob. These could be Holstein steers, which is the beef you’ll see for sale in the country store. “The cows that are giving milk are all in the barn.”

Farmer Bob explained that when a dairy cow produces below the “pounds of milk per day per cow that’s profitable,” they leave the farm for auction in Siler City. “They might be 3, 5, or 8 years old,” Nutter said. “We just sold one for $1,000.”

So when gazing at Maple View Milk in the dairy isle, consider the alternatives. Gallons of industrial milk might be more convenient to purchase, but there are significant benefits to buying local.

“We try to give back to the community, and the community has given back to us,” Nutter reminded us. “If the people don’t drink it, then we wont be here.”

Amazingly, the Maple View milk itself is almost always a cheaper option, just remember to return the bottle.

“If we put milk just in plastic jugs, it’d be a lot less work and a lot simpler,” Nutter said. “But we believe milk tastes better in glass.”

We wholeheartedly agree.

Blair Mikels is a columnist from The Daily Tar Heel. She is a Senior southern studies major from Raleigh. Contact her at mikels@email.unc.edu. Alex Walters is a Junior biology major from Hayesville. Contact him at awalt@email.unc.edu.