About Us
photo credit @craftedincarhartt
Bee Tree Farm & Dairy is a love story. A love for chickens in a suburban backyard that ignited a desire to live in the country. A love for a neglected piece of farmland that was found, then healed. And finally, a deep love for goats.
We believe that staying close to the source of food matters, especially when animals are involved. So we keep ours close and work hard to give them the natural spaces they deserve while protecting the land we all share.
Bee Tree Farm and Dairy commercially produced goat cheeses from the milk of their own goats for six years until retiring cheese production in 2022. Bee Tree cheeses were the culmination of years spent learning from scratch how to build fences, battle coyote, raise dairy animals, and eventually how to turn beautiful milk into beautiful cheese. We hope you loved our cheese as much as we loved the journey to bring it to you.
Our property was purchased in 2008, just 20 miles east of downtown Austin, and the land was completely overgrown, tangled, wild and without any utilities or buildings. Over the course of many (many) years and much (much) sweat, tears, and blood equity, we not only carved out a home deep in the woods – but we built a dairy building, barns and a farm business and community from scratch on this forgotten and abused land. Since that time, we have added an adjacent, heavily wooded ranch that we carefully cleared to welcome guests. Not only does our original dairy building, barn, and pavilion remain as destinations for educational and agricultural experiences for the public, but we are now opening Honeysuckle Ranch for a completely new, secluded experience in the woods behind the original farm. It is an honor to share this special land and these incredible animals with you.
And why the name Bee Tree? Because just after finally building our home and moving to the farm, we discovered a huge, wild bee hive in an old oak tree near the farm house. After safely re-locating the hive, we extracted a few gallons of lovely honey – a good omen – and what we always remember as the first small miracle about this place: the bee tree.
To learn more about how and why we started the dairy, check out these lovely articles about our farm:
Bee Tree Farm is home to a beloved herd of spoiled Nubian and Alpine dairy goats. Each girl was either born here or raised on the farm from birth which means that Jenna (and sometimes Jeremy) spend countless hours bottle feeding baby goats every year. During the spring, it’s not unusual to find one of us in a rocking chair on the porch with a goat in our lap feeding them milk out of an old beer bottle. Our girls live primarily off of the browse available on the farm and spend their days roaming many acres of wooded pasture, sunning themselves in the grass, or generally causing trouble (they are goats, after all). The goats are protected by our fiercely faithful pack of livestock guardian dogs; Great Pyrenees mixes who were raised with the goats. They actually believe they are goats, but we don’t hold that against them.
The goats share the farm with a small herd of Dexter cattle who spend their days roaming the many pastures created for them to rotationally graze and their incredible beef can be found in are farm store during events or market days. Bee Tree is also home to the family horses: Crockett, Cinch, Whiskey, and Nutmeg who serve absolutely no purpose other than to make the farm founder (Jenna) and her kids incredibly happy. Jeremy and Jenna rarely get off the farm for dates but ride the horses through the woods every once in a while, which means they actually serve a pretty important purpose after all!
And of course there are chickens. Chickens on the porch, chickens stomping through the front yard, chickens roosting on the back of the truck. It was the chickens that started this whole mess, after all. We blame them – and thank them – for everything.
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