Beaman's Fork Farm Blog

Well hello, World! Long time. Yeah, I know. Hush . I would start off by saying that it has been a busy couple of months, but I honestly think that is always the case in some form. If it isn't bad weather, it's preparing for upcoming weather. If it isn't dealing with current animal issues, it's preventing future animal issues. If it isn't me drowning in a list of hundreds of pounds of soap I need to make THIS WEEK, it's cleaning up from making all of that soap last week. It is, as we all say on our farms, what it is. But honestly, no one... and I mean no one... signs up for farm life because they want to be bored. After recovering from the mudfest we had thanks to days upon days of torrential downpours in early October, The Boy and I set off for a rare and much needed mini-vacation away from the farm. Probably more so for my sanity than his, because it had been well over 18 months since I had spent a single night away. He travels some for work. Me, not so much. ...

    We are on day 5 (?) of rain here on the farm. Honestly, I've lost count. But here in eastern NC we've had a very, very wet week, and now a cold front moves in and soaks us even more, and Hurricane Joaquin and his rain will immediately follow in the next couple of days.  That's a lot of water, folks.  We've prepared as much as we could but flooding is just going to happen. And is happening. There's nowhere for all of this rain to go when the ground is already completely saturated.  We've got minor flooding in the barn this morning, which we expected, and we also expect that to get worse. It's pretty much just the back end of the barn but it still makes us be creative in caring for the animals and making sure they are doing well.  The goat buck pen behind the barn is flooding some too so we moved Tick and his current lady friend Sage into the horse trailer to give them a dry place to hang out. They are quite content with a hay buffet in there and not havi...

    This past Spring we invested in a milk machine that has proven to be a great addition to the farm many times over. Our milk production has increased from previous years and my arms just couldn't take the manual labor of hand milking any longer. I was spending my days with aching elbows and my nights tossing and turning because my inflamed muscles were causing my arms to fall asleep far more than I was sleeping.  We've enjoyed the milk machine and didn't even mind the daily cleaning and weekly disassembly for deep cleaning anywhere near as much as we thought we would. (For those interested, the machine we purchased after a lot of research was the Simple Pulse, with the additional 6 gallon tank) However now our milk season is coming to and end and we've dried up all but one goat. She's our highest producer and doesn't seem to fair as well with stopping milking cold turkey like the other, smaller producing does can. Abbie is living milk machine herself and will...

Spring has sprung into full life here on the farm in the form of baby goats everywhere (ten to be exact) who are growing fast and doing great. During the last few weeks we have begun the weaning process of separating them from their mothers at night and reuniting them after the morning milking. [gallery link="none" size="medium" ids="749,750,751"] Some of them will be leaving for new homes in a few weeks, which will quiet things down in the barn a little. They all have different personalities and they are all happy to see me every time I walk into the barn even though they were dam raised, not bottle fed (I'll be elaborating on this subject more in a future post). [embed]https://youtu.be/RkCQvDYFe3w[/embed] Life is also moving along well with the new batch of chicks for this year, who are 8 weeks old now. They are still in a pen separate so that they can grow, but will soon be introduced to the free ranging flock. They are overseen by our very patient ...

It's that time of year... Time for my hopefully well rested arms to get back to work hand milking goats every day. Last night we separated Molly and Abbie from their combined six babies and then milked them this morning. The babies were then reunited with their mamas and will have full access to all of the milk they want from her all day long. At night they will sleep in separate stalls in encourage the babies to start eating solid food (which they've been nibbling at for a week now already). And each morning we will strip the mothers of their night's production of milk and back with the babies they go.   I think the mamas actually like the break from the babies at night, quite honestly. Eventually they will be fully weaned and the boys will be sold to their new homes. And so it begins... Milking equipment and glass bottles and sanitized work areas and fresh milk. I'm ready for yogurt and cheese and ice cream and cereal for breakfast!

It has been a busy few weeks here on the farm, especially on the goat side of things. Late in the evening on March 5, our Alpine/Nubian doe Abbie delivered quads. Yep, that's FOUR.  Full term, all normal size, two girls and two boys. She has always had two so we weren't expecting to walk into the barn that evening and find four balls of wet fur in the stall. Like clowns in a clown car, they were. No wonder mama Abbie was so miserable for the last few days before delivering all of these babies!  She has successfully been feeding them all, unassisted. These babies are 3/4 Nubian, 1/4 Alpine and named Arlo, Alice, Abner and Annabelle. Barely three days later on March 8, one of our Lamancha does Molly had twin girls with impressive paint jobs. Molly has a history of only having one big baby, so we were surprised that she had two.  We named them Matilda and Mabel and they are half Lamancha, half Nubian. Three more days go by and our darling Greta (who was born here two years ago to ...

Like many people with livestock, this time of year is crunch time for hay supplies. Our goats wasted more hay this winter than we had planned for (a problem that we have since fixed, and will continue to improve upon this summer) so our hay supply has been running short. Our regular local grower is sold out, like most places, but I was able to get a lead on ten bales from another source so I set out early this morning and claimed it. This definitely takes a stress off of me and should get us through until spring. Now I can take a deep breath and turn my attention back to the anticipation of goats kidding soon. We pasture bred all of the does this year so we don't have exact due dates, just estimates, but we are pretty sure Abbie (pictured) and Molly are ramping up to kid soon. Abbie is definitely ready to go soon so we are keeping a sharp eye on her right now. I think Greta and Sage both have a little ways to go.

  We got our first snow of the winter this week on the farm... four inches, which makes for pretty pictures, but doesn't help much when chores have to be done. The goats and horses stayed hidden inside for the most part, except for an occasional glance outside to see if they were missing anything.  They would peek out but quickly retreat back to the shelter of their stall once they determined that Playing In Snow really isn't on their To Do List for the day. [gallery columns="2" link="none" size="large" ids="672,671"] I can't say that I blamed them one bit. If it weren't for me having to go out in it every couple hours to check on all of the animals (including 30 baby chicks), I wouldn't have gone out there either. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMngRdaBA-o[/embed] I did manage to get out and take a farm tour video for our new YouTube channel .  In this you can see bits and pieces of the farm including the goats, chick...

A nice break in the weather yesterday gave us chance to kick the goats out of the barn long enough to strip their stall, put in their new rubber mat flooring and re-bed it with fresh shavings. Just in time, too, since kidding season will start here around March 5.  Ten more days, and then things start really getting busy around here. The bedding we remove from the goat stall gets repurposed and given to the chickens, who love foraging through and cleaning it up. After they break it down naturally by scratching through it for a month or so, we will transfer it to the gardens to use as mulch and fertilizer. [gallery link="none" size="medium" ids="654,653,652"] Abbie really wins the prize every year for the biggest pregnancy display. I always think there is no way she can get any bigger, yet she proves me wrong each time. Not only does she currently look like she's smuggling two beach balls in her belly, but she's moaning and groaning a lot as the gro...

The news is all aflutter with statements about record low temps for eastern NC today, tonight and tomorrow morning, complicated by the 25+ mph winds bringing the wind chill factor down to zero degrees tonight. And yes, I know I know I know... For all of our northern folks, this is the norm for this time of year. I know. For here, it isn't, and we have to find ways of dealing with it. It's one thing to adapt and take care of yourself (and potentially freezing pipes) but it's another thing to safely get livestock through this without major ordeals. Chickens & ducks: Have extra cracked corn thrown out (which helps generate internal heat), and going out every couple hours with buckets of fresh water. Goats: Plenty of hay, alfalfa pellets free choice, and refilling their heated water bucket as needed. All four are presumed very, very pregnant and therefore we need them eating, drinking, moving and staying warm. Horses: The big one was blanketed for the first time this year (...