Whenever anyone familiar with this general part of North Carolina asks me where it is I live in Orange County, I have learned to reply, “Do you know where the ice cream shop is?” They always do.
The Maple View Farm Ice Cream Shop is a regional legend, a Nutter family enterprise that was a natural extension of their decision to add a dairy processing plant to their farm and put Roger Nutter and his sister Muffin in charge. This was back in 1996.
Young Bob Nutter at a cattle auction
But perhaps I should start at the beginning, which took place in the town of Corinna, Maine in the early part of the twentieth century. There, Fred Nutter, Roger’s grandfather, owned and operated a large dairy farm that had been in the family for four generations. Fred was apparently quite a guy, and a national leader in the development of Holstein dairy cattle. In 1950, he received an honorary degree from the University of Maine for his “outstanding services to Maine agriculture,” and was later Maine State Commissioner of Agriculture. He also established the first John Deere dealership in Maine.
In 1963, Fred and his son Bob attended a cattle auction in Virginia. It was early Spring, and Corinna was still covered in snow. Fred and Bob looked at the green southern grass and decided the climate in that part of the country made it a better place for a dairy farm than Maine was. So, forsaking their native land, they moved the whole operation here, to Hillsborough, North Carolina. Lock, stock and barrel. Actually, not all the stock. They couldn’t truck the 100 milking cows that far because they would have had to be milked several times en route – imagine trying to do that! – so Fred auctioned them off. But they did move all the bulls, heifers and calves, along with all the locks and barrels, not to mention machinery and furniture. And even though it took twenty truck trips to do it.
(Google Maps makes it 920 miles each way, right through New York City and across the George Washington Bridge, heifers mooing all the way. I think it’s probably good they didn’t go through the Lincoln tunnel. Anyway, that makes 36,800 miles in all, enough to go around the world one and a half times.)
Sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side. If you’ve got the guts to make the jump.
Maybe it was the after-effects of the arduous move, but no sooner did they get settled in Hillsborough than Fred retired and Bob took over the farm. Roger was only three at the time, so he grew up here in Carolina. He decided to go into the construction business and spent his young adulthood building and repairing houses. Meanwhile, Bob had become known far and wide as “Farmer Bob.” Along with the farm, he inherited his father’s gumption, but perhaps not his political savvy. “He was a good man,” Roger remembers. “He gave back a lot to the community, and especially in support of the New Hope Presbyterian Church.” Then he pauses. “But he rubbed some people the wrong way.”
In 1996, Bob decided to expand operations at Maple View Farm by adding a dairy processing plant. He asked Roger to come back and run it and Roger agreed, but only if Muffin would also agree, so starting from scratch, the sister and brother team, along with Bob’s partner Russ Siebert, built the business together. They broke ground in May and started production on November 6. Roger remembers the date exactly. “It was the worst day of my life,” he says. The opening was big news. WRAL-TV sent a crew all the way from Raleigh to cover it, but nothing went right. For one, the bottle capper broke down and wouldn’t put the caps on the bottles.
On day two, with the media nowhere in sight, everything worked to perfection, and the bottles of fresh milk and cream were ready for delivery to local stores. By the way, you’re reading this right. They sold their milk in returnable glass bottles, even though the whole industry had long since gone to waxed cardboard containers or plastic jugs. Roger says, “Russ figured the bottles would stand out, and he was right.” Sales soared. People in the Maple View neighborhood, however, didn’t think they should have to go all the way into town to get their delicious, fresh, bottled milk, so they started showing up at the farm at all hours. The Nutters couldn’t afford to staff an on-premises store, so they simply took a big, refrigerated cooler out onto the loading dock and put up a sign that read “Honor System.” Soon, they had to bring out a bigger cooler.
They never had any problem with people stealing, “There was always at least enough cash in the cooler for the milk taken,” Roger says. “It sort of gives you faith in humanity,” he adds, nodding. Unlike his father, the gentle and unassuming Roger has probably never rubbed anyone the wrong way in his whole life..
With the business humming along, some help was needed, so they hired a pretty lady from Burlington named Ann Hopkins, who became Mrs. Roger Nutter twenty years later. Meanwhile, the family had come up with the idea of selling ice cream. Roger designed the building, and the store was sited on a hill overlooking the farm. They bought the machinery, and in December, 2000, actual ice cream started oozing out. A local reporter spilled the vanilla beans and people immediately started showing up, even though the shop wasn’t open or ready to begin selling. Of course, Muffin wouldn’t turn anybody away, so that Christmas season a number of local families had a free frozen treat. Then, on January 1st, the Nutters celebrated the new millennium by officially opening the doors for business. The line was out the door all day.
Muffin died tragically of cancer in 2011 and after Bob followed her in 2019, the ice cream business was continued by Allison Nichols, who with her husband Hank Clapper and longtime Maple View partner and Australian native, Ross Poore, has run it successfully ever since.
In August, 2021, Roger sold the property to Union Grove Farm, and it became a key component of the regenerative vineyard project. Roger agreed to remain for a while to help with the transition, but Greg Bohlen talked him into staying on permanently and he became a full-fledged member of the Union Grove management team. You can take the boy off the farm, but…well, maybe you can’t take the boy off the farm.
Today, the cows and dairy are gone, and the ice cream shop overlooks acres of young grapevines, with the majestic Union Grove Silo – the newest Orange County landmark -- in the background. When you take your tour of Union Grove Farm, you will get to see the vines and the silo, plus the sheep, the worm tank and all the other wonders of our regenerative farming miracle. And you won’t regret it if you make time to stop at the ice cream shop and get yourself a scoop or two. Trust me on that.
To buy your tickets for the tour of the farm, just go to https://uniongrovefarm.com/farm-tours-1 It’s an experience you and your family will enjoy and long remember.
