Beckman Bros.
Dairy & More

Meet the farm

A hundred acres, eleven kids, and one camera.

Don and Catherine Beckman bought this ground from the Binkers in 1963 and raised eleven children on it. Four of their sons run the dairy now. The seventh of the eleven films it.

How it got here

  1. 1947

    A tractor, a plow and a drag disc

    Dad's father buys 40 acres. The same year Dad buys an H tractor, a plow and a little drag disc, brand new, for about fifteen hundred dollars. The family still had that tractor decades later.

  2. 1963

    The hundred acres

    Don and Catherine Beckman buy this 100-acre farm from the Binkers. It is the ground the dairy still sits on.

  3. 1969

    The first loafing barn, and the sign

    The first loafing barn goes up, and so does the sign: Don Beckman and Sons.

  4. 2001

    Catherine

    Mom dies. She raised eleven children in the old farmhouse and, as Ginny puts it, "probably worked the hardest of all for many, many years." The milking parlor, an apron, and black boots.

  5. about 2010

    Four of the six sons

    Dad retires and hands the farm to the four brothers already working it full time. Don Beckman and Sons becomes Beckman Brothers Dairy.

  6. 2024

    Ginny picks up a camera

    The seventh of the eleven starts a YouTube channel and calls it Beckman Brothers Dairy and More, "because more than just the brothers work on the farm."

The operation today

Milking string
200 to 245
It moves through the year. Cows are turned dry ahead of the heavy fall freshening, so the number falls into the 180s before it climbs again.
The parlor
Eight a side
Sixteen cows at a time. Ginny counts the herd in groups of eight: 26 groups plus a short side is 208.
Home farm
100 acres
Bought in 1963. The operation now runs well beyond it, on ground known by the neighbours' names: Herb's, Mike Craig's, Jeff Thompson's, the ridges.
In the ground
Corn, beans, wheat, alfalfa
Some corn is planted strictly for silage, some dual purpose so it can go either way. Wheat gets no-tilled into the alfalfa to add tonnage and hold the hay up.

Who does the work

The four who run it

Donnie · Gerard · Tony · Randy

Four of Don and Catherine's six sons. They had all been working the farm full time for years before it was handed over.

Full time alongside them

Alex Premor, who grew up in the neighbourhood and has been helping in some capacity since he was thirteen, and Sam Huber, sister Karen's son. Anyone who has watched a few videos knows how much runs through Alex.

When they need more hands

John Henry, who grew up on a dairy just north of here, comes on weekends around his own job and his own cattle. Kyle fills in through winter when the concrete work slows. Jacob, nearly a full electrician, helps when he can. Roy comes over from the Equity, Colin is learning it from his grandpa, Jack fits it around tree trimming, and Joni and Jenna are the ones you want when it is time to bottle calves.

And the ones keeping it running at home

Penny, Vicki, Michelle and Rebecca. In Ginny's words: "You ladies have sacrificed so much over the years so that these four brothers can continue working the dairy farm."

The eleven, oldest to youngest

  1. Donnie J.
  2. Colleen
  3. Gerard
  4. Dolores
  5. Hank
  6. Ann
  7. Virginia (Ginny)
  8. Tony
  9. Ben
  10. Karen
  11. Randy

Ginny is the one you never see. She is behind the camera in every video, and she is the reason there is a channel at all.