Beaufort Way Farm is organized under the Limited Liability Company Jumpin’Mullet Charters, LLC, the same as Ophelia Inlet Products. For marketing and sales purposes, especially the Olde Beaufort Farmers’ Market, we advertise Beaufort Way Farm products with Ophelia Inlet Products.
Here’s a link to an independent newspaper article written about the farm: Beaufort Way Farm a ducky operation in Atlantic. It was published in July 2022.
As an FYI, I’m retired from the charter fishing business, i.e. Jumpin’Mullet Charters, LLC. It’s just so time consuming and a lot of work. I leave the website up so that on rainy days I can occasionally look through the pictures and smile. On the other hand, if everything is easy and non-complicated, I still do an occasional charter.
The community of Atlantic on Core Sound is where it all started. Otherwise, I recon’ the farm could be located anywhere. Granddaddy moved from Atlantic to Beaufort (Ann Street) during the Great Depression to work at The Bank of Beaufort, and raised Wood Ducks in a flight pen in his back yard, and even exported Wood Duck eggs to Italy. I remember it like it was yesterday.
Daddy came along (Marsh Street) and took it to the next level, raising some of the finest Giant Canada Geese in the world. We also had Cackling Geese, Richardson’s Geese, Black Ducks (these were his favorite ducks), Pintails (Sprigtails), Muscovy ducks (good setters), Mandarins (Chinese Wood Ducks), oh my goodness, the list goes on and on…
Daddy left town in about 1990 (the old way of Beaufort life was lost by then), and moved to the location off of HWY 101 about 5 miles north of Beaufort. He cleared about 3 acres of land for the current farm and enclosed it all in a Chain Link fence, not so much to keep the residents in, as to keep the varmints out. I can only guess at the numbers of fowl he had back in the 1990’s, but it was at least 70 Giant Canada Geese, Barnacle Geese, many species of ducks, peafowl, turkeys, and more chickens running underneath your feet than you could shake a stick at.
In year 2000 he passed away, and the bobcats killed the last of the peafowl within a couple of years. Just couldn’t keep them out. They would climb a tree outside the fence, cross over to another tree inside the fence, and then proceed to snatch the peafowl out of their roosting spots in the trees after dark…
Fast forward to about 2017, and again folks did a wonderful job clearing the 15+ year old “cut-down” to make a pasture, with the goats clearing the old growth areas in the woods. It was a tremendous amount of work (over three years, 2015 to 2017) getting it cleared, but I never expected it to be any different. A special thanks to my really good friends and family who have helped! Nobody can do all this work on their own!
I still kept Daddy’s chairs out there where he used to sit and watch his birds. The legs have partially rusted away on most of them, but I still remember him moving from chair to chair, and some of y’all probably do too… It’s was a special place…
The farm was moved early in 2021 about 30 miles northeast to Atlantic, North Carolina. There are about 10 acres to grow into here, but it’s mostly filled with beautiful Longleaf Pine trees, as well as old growth Live Oak trees, so there are no plans to ever clear that part of the farm. A maritime forest is just so beautiful.
*Core Sound photo courtesy of Susan Mason of Atlantic, NC.