Orange County farm recalls brush with tornado 2 years ago

By Bryan Mims, WRAL reporter

Hillsborough, N.C. — As they braced for severe weather Thursday, the workers on an Orange County dairy farm vividly remembered their encounter with a tornado nearly two years ago.

On April 19, 2019, a twister demolished two barns at Maple View Farm near Hillsborough. No employees or animals were hurt, but the farm’s owners said they hope never to have a repeat.

“We were trying to plant corn [and] cut silage. It happened at a bad time of the year,” Maple View co-owner Mike Strowd said with a chuckle.

“We had some damage to other places, but these two buildings were gone,” Strowd said of the barns. “It took us about six months to rebuild everything.”

That included fences around the pastures, which forced a temporary relocation for Maple View’s dairy cows.

“The cattle in the pastures moved to Statesville, out of town for about six to eight weeks,” he said. “We had to rebuild the fences and get the electricity back to the fences.”

But the milk still flowed, making the cream that draws people from miles around to Maple View’s ice cream shop. Had the tornado churned a path a couple hundred feet closer to the farmhouse, it would have struck the creamery and milk parlor.

“I don’t know if we could have sustained that kind of loss to rebuild,” Strowd said.

Now, when he hears of tornado potential, he said he gets a “sickening feeling.”

“I don’t think you can do but so much preparation other than having your generators hooked up,” he said.

Maple View’s generators were hooked up Thursday, and the farm’s equipment was picked up and fastened down.

As for the cows?

“You can’t really herd them anywhere. They’re pretty tough animals. They’re used to the weather,” Strowd said.