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Choosing the Right Dairy Cow for a Small Acreage

You’ve decided a dairy cow could work for your family. Wonderful! Now you’re ready to get a cow and put her in the back pasture (or the backyard, as the case may be).

But not so fast. Don’t just buy the first – or the cheapest – cow that comes your way. Look for the best cow for you and your land, and you will likely save yourself a lot of headaches (not to mention avoid some of the very things that had you worried while you were reading the first article of this series on making the case for a family milk cow).

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Is a Family Milk Cow Right for Your Homestead?

If you asked ten different people, “What is the hinge pin element of a successful homestead?” you’d get at least a couple dozen different answers. These remarks would run the gamut from simple, perhaps obvious, observations to mind-numbingly complicated, high-tech solutions, and everything in between.

Pose that same question to School of Traditional School Instructors Shawn and Beth Dougherty, and they would tell you without skipping a beat that the key to their homesteading success has been the grass-fed dairy cow.

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Grow | Raise

Worms: Your Low-Maintenance Livestock

Once your worm bin is set up and the worms are settled in, the hardest part is behind you.

But like any other livestock, worms require a little maintenance now and then. Fortunately, a healthy worm bin doesn’t need much time – they are very self-sufficient and can last weeks with little to no attention.

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Grow | Raise

How to Adapt Your Worm Bin for Any Climate

One of the most common reasons a worm bin struggles has nothing to do with what you’re feeding the worms, or even the moisture level inside the bin. It’s the internal temperature that can make or break the productivity of the bin, and that has everything to do with where the bin is located and how well it’s prepared to handle current weather conditions.

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When Do Chickens Start Laying Eggs?

Once your young hens start looking less like chicks and more like chickens, one question tends to take over: when are they going to start laying? It’s one of the most common things new flock owners wonder about, and the honest answer is that it varies more than most people expect.

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Health | Preserve | Raise

From Hive to Healing: How to Make Herbal Salves with Beeswax from Your Backyard Bees

When most people think about keeping bees, they picture their honey harvest bottled and in the pantry. But herbalist and beekeeper Kaylee Richardson’s workshop at the School of Traditional Skills, “Honey & Herbs,” reveals something many overlook: beeswax is a powerful ingredient for natural medicine-making.

Read More From Hive to Healing: How to Make Herbal Salves with Beeswax from Your Backyard Bees

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