The Crushing Summer

Roots and Refuge Podcast

Jessica Sowards

Home & Garden, Leisure

5 • 646 Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2024

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hey y'all, welcome back to episode 72 of the Roots and Refuge Podcast.

After a much-needed break, I'm excited to reconnect. This summer, which I’ve come to call "The Crushing Summer," was both deeply challenging and transformative for our family and the homestead. With my eldest son graduating and heading off to college, I found myself grieving the end of his childhood and reflecting on how fast time goes by, especially as I realized my youngest will be in the same position in just nine short years. This sparked a full audit of our life and farm, leading us to ask ourselves "Why?" about everything we do.

The season also brought us face to face with significant loss on the farm. We had to put down two of our dairy cows, lost lambs during birth, and said goodbye to two elderly alpacas. The grief was overwhelming, and for a moment, I seriously questioned if I wanted to keep farming. I considered what life might be like with less — less stress, less demand. This was the turning point where I knew we needed to make changes, not just on the farm but in our lives.

After some deep reflection, we made the decision to downsize. We’ve reduced our dairy and beef operations and scaled back our gardens, keeping just what we need to enjoy rather than to preserve every last bit. Every system was reassessed with the goal of creating more time for our family. Though it's been hard to say goodbye to certain animals and plans, we’re finding peace in these choices, even reassessing our dream of building a house.

I’ve found a renewed passion for our current home, embracing this season of slowing down and focusing on what’s in front of me. I am completely at peace with today being enough and finding fulfillment in the everyday moments. This summer may have been crushing, but within it, I found clarity and growth. I hope that in sharing this story, you find seeds of your own to nurture. You’re not alone. 🌱

Thanks for tuning in! If you’d like to join our Patreon page, you can get early access to all our podcast episodes and monthly live Q&As with Miah and Jess (including past lives). Visit our Patreon Page to learn more and check out past episodes of the podcast on the website.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, darlings. Welcome back to the Roots and Refuge podcast. My name is Jessica Sowers, and I am your host. My friends call me Jess, and I hope you will too. And here on my podcast, I talk about all things homesteading, growing food by raising
0:21.6	animals, growing gardens, enjoying, preparing, preserving that food, sharing it, and just trying to
0:28.2	live a little more mindfully in relationship with each other and with the earth. I took a little bit
0:34.1	of an unintentional break from podcasting. I say it was unintentional because I did not
0:39.8	plan a break. It just kind of happened that in the busy season, I got very overwhelmed and
0:47.1	one week turned into a few. And I kept thinking I'd have time and didn't. Then I finally decided,
0:53.7	let me be intentional about this.
0:55.1	Let me be realistic.
0:56.5	I need to lay this down for a moment and I'll return to it when I can give it my full self and what it deserves.
1:03.0	And that moment is now.
1:04.9	I'm so happy to be sitting down at my office and recording for you all today.
1:12.1	I want to kind of come back into this since it has been,
1:15.8	I think it's been almost two months since I recorded a podcast.
1:19.1	And it's been an incredibly impactful summer in my life personally.
1:25.1	I would say in our marriage, in our family,
1:29.6	as well as in our journey as homesteaders. This has been, I've called it the crushing summer in a lot of ways. I feel like I've
1:37.9	grown a lot and had to do a lot of inventory this summer. And as kind of an entry point back into discussing
1:47.1	all of the podcast topics, I have been keeping a running list in this time that I've not been
1:53.1	recording of things that I want to discuss and guess that I want to have on, I kind of want to
1:57.5	give you guys some insight into where I've been. I feel like whenever we grow
2:02.4	fruit in our lives, it's full of seed. And unintentionally, like if we're growing turmoil or despair
2:09.5	or chaos and we share that with people, you know, there are times that people can carry the burden
	...

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