Hey guys, what is up? Welcome back to the Roots and Refuge podcast. I am your host,

Jessica Sauerz, my friends call me Jess, and I hope you will too. And here on my podcast,

we talk about all things growing food, homesteading, raising animals, gardening, as well as preserving

food, preparing it,

enjoying it, sharing it, and overall just trying to live more mindfully in relationship with one

another and with the earth. Today on the podcast, I have kind of an interesting topic. It's a little

contemplative. And if talking about maybe obscure things like

feelings is not really your thing, I want to implore you to just hang on for just a second.

Because I actually think that this is a topic that applies if you are going to engage in any

sort of lifestyle that leads you into mindful

relationship, which homesteading does. You can homestead. You can grow a garden, you can have chickens or

sheep or goats or cows or whatever, and be oblivious to relationship.

Plenty of people do.

In fact, I would say that much of our modern, modern agricultural structures and systems,

now within those systems, there are individuals who are putting their hands on animals

every day, and I believe that those individuals would have a whole lot

harder time being oblivious to relationship. But the corporate structures are definitely built with

relationship nowhere near the top of the priority list. It's usually built for profits,

for production, and the relationship aspect just cannot be considered whenever you're going after

profits. So whenever I talk about the modern agricultural system, I don't ever want to dismiss

the individuals who are doing, you know, a lot of times at family business, they're doing

what they were taught. And they are very much engaging in the face-to-face part of relationship with what it is that they are

...