Lane in the Woods Creamery

Lane in the Woods Creamery is a small dairy farm in Marshall, North Carolina that currently uses a herd of five cows.

Despite the unusually small size of this local, family dairy farm, they depend on the same cruel practice of stealing babies from their mothers that large commercial dairy farms deploy in order for humans to  needlessly consume the milk intended for baby animals. Lane in the Woods takes calves away from their mothers just three days after birth, noting that the cow-calf bond quickly forms (in fact it is already present at birth) and it becomes “harder to separate them in the long run.”

Before the mother-child relationship is destroyed—which in natural herds lasts a lifetime—female cows are forcibly impregnated through artificial insemination year after year at Lane in the Woods, unless they have a serious health issue. That means that just like on so-called “factory farms,” the females on this farm are pregnant for most of their lives, except for three months out of the year, and must repeatedly endure the trauma of having their babies, whom they carry for nine months, stolen from them.

If their babies are born male they don’t have a bright future ahead. Because the males are unable to become pregnant and lactate, they are sold off to “neighbors, friends, or on Craiglslist” to be used for their semen or to be killed for cheap beef.

The females born on this dairy farm will be forcibly impregnated starting at about two years old, year after year, just like their mothers before them.

Cows used for dairy at Lane in the Woods only live out a fraction of their normal lifespan. Cows can naturally live for 15-20 years or more. But the oldest cow that they have ever kept only lived to age 11 before being killed. Just like on large commercial farms, at the end of their lives, mother cows exploited for milk at Lane in the Woods are rewarded by being slaughtered— in this case, at Pinnacle Meats in Rutherfordton, NC.

Lane in the Wood currently sells cow’s milk cheese at:

• Weaverville Farmer’s Market
• East Asheville Market
• Mars Hill Farmer’s & Artisanal Market