The Small-Scale Dairy offers a holistic approach that explores the relationships between careful, conscientious management and the production of safe, healthy and delicious milk. A historical overview offers readers a balanced perspective on the current regulatory environment in which raw milk lovers find themselves.

Goats have provided humankind with essential products for centuries; indeed, they bear the noble distinction of being the first domesticated farm animal. From providing milk and meat for sustenance and fiber and hides for clothing and shelter to carrying packs and clearing brush, there isn’t much that goats cannot do. Managing goats successfully requires an understanding of how nature designed them to thrive, including nutritional and psychological needs, as well as how to identify a problem and intercede before it’s too late.

For more than a decade, Gianaclis Caldwell and her family have operated Pholia Farm Creamery, an off-grid, raw milk goat cheese dairy. In Holistic Goat Care, Caldwell offers readers a comprehensive guide to maintaining a healthy herd of goats, whether they are dairy goats, meat goats, fiber goats, or pet goats. Holistic Goat Care will empower even novice goat owners to confidently diagnose and treat most of the ailments that goats might experience. For the experienced goat farmer, the book offers a depth of insight and approaches to treatment not found in any other book. Caldwell places special emphasis throughout on holistic, natural, and alternative approaches to caring for goats, including information on:

• Handling and managing goats using their natural instincts as an asset
• Developing good farm management practices, such as appropriate housing and fencing systems and manure and mortality management
• Making feeding decisions based on understanding goats’ ruminant digestive system and their evolutionary needs
• Growing forage and garden crops as feed and utilizing wild browse
• Troubleshooting health problems based on assessing symptoms
• Implementing advanced health procedures such as pain control, fecal testing, and transplanting rumen microbes from healthy to sick goats
• Diagnosing, treating, and preventing more than 75 common goat ailments

Whether your herd is two or two hundred, this first-of-its-kind, comprehensive book will help you keep your goats healthy, safe, and productive, and give you a deep and enjoyable insight into the wondrous creature that is the goat.

The craft of home cheesemaking is exploding in popularity. However most “beginner” books are essentially loosely organized collections of recipes that lack a progressive approach to teaching the fundamentals of this exciting and satisfying traditional skill. Mastering Basic Cheesemaking provides a complete hands-on guide to making cheese and other fermented dairy products from scratch, geared toward helping the novice cheesemaker develop the intuition and abilities needed for success, especially in the real world of the home kitchen.

This well-illustrated, clearly written practical guide assumes no experience on the part of the aspiring cheesemaker. Topics include:

• Understanding your ingredients, tools and techniques.
• Whipping up “instant cheeses,” such as ricotta and paneer, while learning basic milk chemistry.
• Progressing to fermented dairy products such as kefir, yogurt and sour cream.
• Using bacteria and coagulant to create spreadable and tender cheeses like quark, chèvre, cream cheese and American-style cottage cheese.
• Graduating to curdled, aged and ripened cheese—mozzarella, feta, cheddar, gouda, and parmesan.

Whether you are a budding cheesemaker, avid do-it-yourselfer, foodie, homesteader or cheese professional, this complete course in beginning cheesemaking from one of North America’s foremost instructors is packed with everything you need to create delicious, nourishing and beautiful classic cheeses and other dairy delights.