Top 10 Reasons to Keep a Jersey Cow

1.  Personality.  They don’t know they are cows.  Picture a giant milk giving dog who will lick you from fingertips to armpit if it thinks you have a treat.

2.  Ease of Milking.  I milk goats and a cow.  Amazingly, the cow is easier to milk than any of the goats.

3.  The Milk is Amazing.  Just amazing.  It is so sweet and delicious and unlike anything you will ever find in the grocery store.

4.  Cream:  Jersey cows give amazing quantities of the good stuff.  (Note:  they don’t give as much as Holsteins, but their milk is much richer!)

5.  Fertilizer for the Garden:  The other thing cows produce in quantity is manure.  Luckily it enriches the garden and pasture!

6.  Calves!  So precious!

7.  Save on chicken feed (part 1.)  Chickens love the milk and whey we give them.  Feeding it to our feathered friends is certainly preferable to wasting it!

8.  Save on chicken feed (part 2.)  This one may be a bit much for the non-homesteader to handle, but chickens are huge fans of cow manure.  It sounds gross, but it keeps the pasture clean, because they spread out the cow-pies while searching for loose grains and fly larvae.  This is part of nature’s plan for sanitation!

9.  Butter!  Imagine the butter you can make when you get inches of cream in each jar!  Spectacular!

10.  Cheese!  Cheese making ranges from seriously simple to extremely complex.  Either way, I’m all for a hobby I can eat!

So there you have it!  Equal treatment for the dairy cow.  She may be bigger than you, and that can be intimidating at first, but she’s a great asset to family farms and homesteads!

All About Growing Peppers

Peppers present some of the summer gardens biggest flavors and brightest hues, and these striking fruits are simple to store and have a wealth of delicious uses in the kitchen. Plus, sweet and specialty peppers are among the most expensive produce at the grocery store, so growing peppers of your own can be a money-saving move.

Pepper Types to Try

Sweet bell peppers come in various sizes and colors, and the fruits’ colors change as they mature. They grow best where summers are long and warm.

Specialty sweet peppers include pimentos, frying peppers, and other sizes, shapes and flavors. Small-fruited varieties are among the easiest peppers to grow.

Southwestern chile peppers have complex flavors with varying degrees of heat. Many varieties bear late and all at once, so they can be a challenge to grow in climates with short summers.

Specialty hot peppers range from moderately spicy jalapeños to hotter cayennes to hottest-of-all habaneros. Most are easy to grow.

Ornamental peppers may feature spicy, brightly colored fruits, purple or variegated foliage, or both.


When to Plant Peppers

Start seeds indoors under bright fluorescent lights in early spring, eight to 10 weeks before your last spring frost date. If possible, provide bottom heat to keep the plants’ containers near 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Make sure the seeds stay slightly moist. Seeds should sprout within three weeks. Transfer seedlings to larger containers when they are about six weeks old. Don’t set peppers outside until at least two weeks after your average last frost date, during a period of warm weather.Always harden off seedlings by gradually exposing them to outdoor weather a few hours each day for at least a week before transplanting them outdoors.

How to Plant Peppers

All peppers grow best under warm conditions, but gardeners in cool climates can keep peppers happy by using row covers. Choose a sunny site that has fertile, well-drained soil with a pH between 6.0 and 6.5. Loosen the planting bed to 12 inches deep, and thoroughly mix in a 1-inch layer of mature compost. Dig planting holes 12 inches deep and at least 18 inches apart, and enrich each with a spadeful of additional compost. Partially refill the holes, and situate plants so they are planted slightly deeper than they were in their containers. Water well.

Harvesting and Storing Peppers

You can eat peppers when they are mature yet still green (green peppers), although the flavor and the vitamin content of peppers improve as they ripen to red, yellow or orange. Use pruning shears to snip ripe peppers from the plant, leaving a small stub of stem attached. Bumper crops can be briefly steam-blanched or roasted and then frozen, either whole (for stuffing) or chopped. Peppers are also easy to dry. Dried peppers quickly plump if soaked in hot water, or you can grind them into powders for your spice shelf.