Hey there, darling! My name is Jess. There was a time that all I wanted in the world was a little farm where I could raise my family and grow our food. Now, that's exactly what exists outside my door. In watching it unfold, a new dream was formed in my heart – to share this beautiful life with others and teach them the lessons we've learned along the way. Welcome to the Roots and Refuge podcast, friend. I am so glad you're here.
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Don't mean it to be, like, scary dramatic. Just a very matter of fact that this is the most connected time we've ever been at a distance as in in humanity. Oh, for sure. To be able to have, even though it's a glimpse into lives on social media, there is, There is a type of intimacy, like, a a a higher level with, like, like, a flying over the field look into someone's life that we just never would have had before. But I think that something unique about Meg Holler, I mean, she is our glue, really. We are here 4 years later. And she's her baby that we got together to celebrate in the first place is now four years old. Or just about to turn that? Yeah. Just about. So it's a wild look because her and my friendship personally just began over I think it was email. Yeah. I think she got our email from our YouTube channel before they traversed the country to find their home. And we got together in person while they were on that journey. We knew each other before we were ever, like, homesteading itself. It was just the desire that was mutual to return to the land to not even really have language for it yet, but just searching out what it looks like to do something radically different. Yeah. And in that kind of mindset of just like, I guess we're a little bit different than everyone else. Think that is really bonding for the right people. So our friendship began over email, but then we met in person. And I think that was really rooting. For us. And that has been rooting repeatedly, for our friendship as a group, but even, like, you and I coming together or the fact that Brianna and Rebecca lives close to one another. Larry before you did that. Long before. And, like, now, Lorraine and Meg live near one another. And it I don't know. That is an interesting thing because to me, it's not normal. I'm very aware every time we get together, how unique every little piece of this
And important. For instance, there are what I there are what we call high value crops. And, of course, this applies even in a home garden where you might only have let's say you have a handful of raised beds. Let's say, you know, you don't have just tons and tons of space. You really need to think about what you're giving your space to and how it translates into value. Because as for, you know, most of us, we're purchasing food at the store, and you have a grocery budget. You have how much money you comfortably want to spend at the store or uncomfortably spend either way. And for instance, like those little blister packs of cherry tomatoes are, you know, now 5 ish dollars for a package of tomatoes. And corn, whenever it comes in during the season, even the organic corn is gonna be $2 or 2 ears for a dollar. You could even potentially get it let for less than that. Of course, some places, I'm sure it costs more. But whenever you look at how much garden bed space it takes to grow the ears of corn versus the cherry tomatoes, the cherry tomatoes are a more high value crop. So, like, one plant of cherry tomatoes is gonna take up roughly, you know, a 2 foot by 2 foot space in a raised garden bed. You know? This that that growing practice is way into that, how you prune different things like that. But let's just say, for the sake of an average, about 2 foot by 2 foot in a raised garden bed, you can grow a cherry tomato plant. And over the course of the season, you may harvest a couple of gallons of cherry tomatoes off that plant at least. You know what I mean? Depending on how prolific it is and how long your plant stays healthy. I think that's a solid average to say a couple of gallons or more. And
Hey there, darlings. Welcome back to the roots in refuge podcast. I am your host, Jessica Sauertz. My friends call me Jess, and I hope you will too. And here on my podcast, we talk about all things homesteading, growing food by raising animals, growing gardens, preserving, preparing, and enjoying that food, as well as just trying to live a little more mindfully in relationship with each other and with the earth. I post new podcast episodes on all major platforms every Wednesday, and the episode for the next week goes out a week early on our Patreon for our Patreon members. Today's topic actually comes from Patreon. I asked there for a podcast request, anything that people wanted to hear about, any particular guests that they wanted to hear from. And Amanda Waltz asked a question. She said, I'd love for you to talk about how to navigate involving your kids on the homestead. I want my kids to grow up with a work ethic, but not resent the hard work a homestead brings. My kids are too young for a lot right now, 4 kids 9 and under, but I'm thinking about this a lot as they grow up before my eyes. And I thought this was a really great discussion topic. So thank you, Amanda, for posing this. It is something that I actually get asked a lot about, and I will be completely frank. I've not taken a lot of time to dive in to really breaking down and teaching about parenting and marriage for one big reason. I'm still in the trenches on doing these things. So while I think my methods are working pretty well, I would like to maintain a place of humility, and I don't ever want to assume like, hey. Listen to me. I'm doing it right. The other thing is that I'm parenting my children, and I I
A time that things were not treated as disposable, that you made the most out of everything that you had, and you didn't have a whole lot. Because if we acknowledge the way that we've been raised, we the millennial generation and those who are younger than us, we've really grown up in a world that had access to cheap goods that were affordable to ship. So the phenomenon of being to just replace things cheaper than you can fix them is very new. Prior to that, people had things that would last. I mean and it's, honestly, I'm not blaming our generation for this mindset. I feel like this was something that was done to us. What do you do whenever you can't things are manufactured to not last very long. They're manufactured to be dang near impossible to fix yourself. It's not like it was 60 years ago. It used to be that if you bought a a Cuisinart food processor, you were gonna have it till you died. And now if you buy a kitchen appliance, even if you spend 100 of dollars on it, there's a very realistic truth that that thing may break within the next 5 years or 10 years if that. Appliances, they just don't last very long. A lot of things just don't last very long, and this has been sort of a cyclical thing. Like, for instance, I mean, like, the fast fashion industry, that's a fairly new thing. Whenever before I was born, when my parents were children, clothes were still made in the United States. A lot of families made their own clothes because you could reasonably go buy fabric. Now it's cheaper to buy fast fashion than it is to go buy fabric and make your own clothes. So we're having to so push against the mainstream because of our culture. And I'm really trying to give you guys practical steps here and not, like, preach on this. But like, acknowledging that, I think, sets a very realistic expectation. And and the thing that I have first and foremost tried to keep front and center in my mind while I'm going
I don't know. I'm what should I do? And around and around in circle. And I think, I don't think I know, that most women, especially if they've homeschooled, homestead, if home is their base Mhmm. When those children are gone, I really think depression is very common. Yeah. You just fall into this season of, lost and dark and and purposeless and who am I? And even if you've done things, and I did, I always had a little side gig going. I always had some kind of side business going and home and home study and homeschooling. Yeah. So you weren't, like, idle. You were busy. No, I was always very busy. And, but when the kids were gone, it was like, wow. Yeah. Like and and I was used to canning, you know, 800 to a 1000 jars a year of food. We had I I was milking up to 8 goats twice a day. I was making our cheese, had our big gardens. We always had sheep. We always had a beef. We always had a hog. Mhmm. You know, we just didn't someone said one time, do you ever go to the grocery store? Yeah. And I and I said, well, you know, now and then I get a Jones for some Lays salt and vinegar chips and a Mountain Dew. It's just I want that. Like every now and then. And and, or orange juice. Mhmm. But other than that, we really didn't need to go to the store. You know, we would maybe, but we didn't need to, we didn't have to. And
