Hey guys, what is up? Welcome back to the Roots and Refuge podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Sowers,

my friend call me Jess, and I hope you will too. I'm so glad to have you here on my podcast today

where we talk about all things, homesteading, food, growing, gardening, raising animals,

as well as using food, enjoying it,

preserving it, sharing it, and largely about the mindful relationship with the earth and each other.

I think the theme of anything that I do, at least I hope, is to be mindful and to make conscious choices in consumption, in

interaction and engagement. I don't want to waste my one and only life. And that's what I

hope to be able to share. So we talk about all things on this podcast. You know, sometimes it is

these kind of more deep thinking topics. Sometimes it's very practical chickens and dairy

animals and answering questions about homesteading and all of that. Today I don't feel super well.

I am dealing with kind of a seasonal crud, which I've historically had throughout my life. I've always been really

prone to having kind of like sinus crud and stuff like that during the fall when the weather

starts changing. Pre-COVID, it wasn't that big of a deal. You know, you kind of just sucked it up

and pushed through it because it could last a couple weeks. Now it's kind of awkward because, you know, you're in public and

you're coughing and sneeze in. And so I'm kind of been holed up the last week and not really doing

much. Just very inconveniently, this happened to come on, though, about a week before our estimated, not our estimated, our

forecasted first frost. So I have been balancing the need to kind of rest and take it easy

with the absolute demand to wrap up the garden and basically get anything out of it that will be damaged by the

frost. So I've still got 36 hours left. I came in to my office to sit down and record this

podcast. And frankly, I didn't feel like doing it. But one thing that I have, I've kind of had to learn the tension between two things

that I want to hold the standards for myself. I want to hold the standard for myself that I rest

when I need a rest, but I also want to hold the standard for myself that I fulfill my commitments

...