Best Animals for a Homestead

<p>In today’s podcast “Best Animals for a Homestead” is the topic. We have tried many animals and plan to try a few more. The best animals for a homestead will depend on your goals and land situation. I’ll talk about our thought processes and how we came to choose our animals and specific breeds.</p> <p>Let me take a minute to say welcome to all the new listeners and welcome back to the veteran homestead-loving regulars who stop by the FarmCast for every episode. If it were not for you, this show would not exist. I appreciate you all and hope you and your families are doing well. I’m so excited to share with you what’s going on at the farm this week.</p> <h2>Our Virginia Homestead Life Updates</h2> <p>Because this podcast is generally about the best animals for a homestead, I’ll keep the garden and fruit portion relatively short.</p> <h3>Garden</h3> <p>The garden is amazing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We love this ground cover. The plants are thriving like they never have before. Even with the harsh heat we have been experiencing, everything is thriving.</p> <h4>Tomatoes</h4> <p>The tomatoes are coming on strong. There seemed to be only a few tomatoes for a while, but now when I go out there, I see every plant has many, many tomatoes. It won’t be long now. The only type of tomato I am growing this year is a paste tomato. I will get my slicing tomatoes from other vendors at the farmer’s market. My tomato crop is specifically designed to produce lots of tomatoes to be used in making tomato sauce and barbecue sauce.</p> <h4>Peppers</h4> <p>Peppers are up next. You can’t have tomato plants without pepper plants. They are all doing so well. The sweet banana peppers starting bearing first, then the jalapeno and cayenne started ripening. I’ve harvested only one green bell pepper but many more are in the near future. The plants are strong and bearing lots of fruit. They just need to get a bit bigger. It’s going to be a fabulous year for peppers. That green bell pepper was out of this world. I like to cut