Beaman's Fork Farm Blog

Here you will see Cliff (aka The Boy) install a package of bees the simple way here on our farm. This isn't the ONLY way to do it, but it has worked very well for us and has become our preferred method. We find that the bees don't get nearly as stressed.

Kidding season is in full swing here and if you are interested in a baby, this is where you will find the most up-to-date info aside from talking with us directly. We do not sell "bottle babies". All of our babies are raised naturally by their mothers, handled daily, and weaned around 8 weeks of age. The only exception would be situations where that is not possible due to unforeseen emergency situations. We do not sell babies to single goat homes. Goats are herd animals and need to be with at least one other goat. Buyers must already have a goat, be in the process of buying a second goat (baby or adult) or buy two of ours at once. All of our babies are disbudded and come from a CLOSED CAE NEGATIVE herd (most recent test date Jan 2017). For biosecurity reasons, we do not allow public access to our farm or animals unless you are buying a baby. We want to insure that your baby comes to you strong and healthy! PLEASE NOTE: Expected wean dates listed below are approximat...

Rule #1 of living on a farm: Things rarely, if ever, go as planned. You would think that by now I would know this but, to be quite honest, I think there is something in my brain that just completely ignores it and goes on a coffee break. The arbitrary "plan" was that we really wouldn't expect any baby action in the goat world until Friday or Saturday, but... So my Monday morning started off like every work day morning: I'm a semi-early riser by default, I stumble down the stairs toting mini blind dog Marla in one arm and a water bottle in the other, trailed by my 100 pound white fluffy Pyrenees sidekick Casey (who would sleep until noon if left to her own devices), to greet my earlier rising husband who has been up for at least an hour. And Seife. Oh, bouncy bouncy getupinyourbusiness soap dog Seife. He's always that way too cheery one in the morning. Fast forward a few minutes and I have coffee in hand, mini dog has been walked, slippers have been traded in...

After taking more than a year off from raising chicks, our first little fuzzy munchkins arrived last week via USPS from a hatchery in Iowa. I ordered them late last fall for their first 2017 delivery date, and instead of going with our usual production layer breeds, I opted for the rare breed section and pretty much just kinda sorted ordered two of everything. Looks like we will have an interesting flock this year but that's not really what I am here to talk about. Living on a farm of any size, especially with livestock, is a lot of work every single day. Goats, chickens and horses don't take holidays off and neither do you; you have the same morning, noon, and evening chores no matter if Santa is flying in or a hurricane is blowing through. Throw in elderly animals with special needs (we've got two horses well into their 30s and a blind dog with congestive heart failure), and you've got an additional element of care and attention on your list. Sometimes you ne...

Our original plan (with our vet) was to wait until this fall to test Snow for Cushing's Disease because the test would be more accurate. However, despite the diet change, supplements, restricted pasture access and constant monitoring, Snow has continued to have Cushing-type symptom issues, including increased hoof tenderness. (If you're jumping in now and don't know the back story, we found our 30+ yr old miniature horse Snow having a seizure in her stall in July. You can read about it here.) We have been consulting constantly with our vet through the whole ordeal and we made the joint decision that we should go ahead and test her as soon as possible as well as x-ray her hooves to look for the beginnings of any rotation. Of course we have Hurricane Hermine moving in on us, but Dr. White was determined to get this done sooner rather than later so we can start treating her with the medication she needs if she is positive. [caption id="attachment_2071" align="al...

This past Saturday was going like any other -- I had just gotten home from selling soap at the local farmers market, my car full of the stock I brought back with me, I was a hot and sweaty mess, and ready to relax. It had been a busy week and an equally as busy market day and I had been looking forward to putting my aching feet up for a couple of hours of quiet time. I got out of my car and before I went inside the house, I remembered that the horses were in their stalls because severe storms had been threatening to blow through, but the weather was clearing and they could safely go out and stretch their legs for a few hours. I walked down the long aisle way of the barn to the stalls in the back where Pebbles was sticking her head over the gate watching me and quiet rustling noises were coming from Snow's stall. And that's when I saw it. Snow, our miniature mare, was facing the back of her stall, wobbling on her back end, and jerking her head rhythmically up in the air, almost ...

If you haven't seen already, we have a YouTube channel that has been pretty active lately... Don't forget you can subscribe to our YouTube channel and keep up with all of our new stuff and silly farm shenanigans!

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...