Building a Homestead from Scratch | 2 Months In | Feat. Roots and Refuge

The thing I like most about this story is it's— Lily, you watching this? All right, try not to hit the tripod. Every day is bring your kid to work day. I like about this story is that it's a classic homestead story. So many of you guys are starting out, you're looking for raw land, you're looking for something existing to buy, and many others of you are just in the grind. It doesn't matter. This is the classic homestead story from a very different angle. You guys are used to this, you're used to selfie shots and us walking around and filming ourselves. So besides being the classic starting over homestead story, this is a story from a third person angle on one of our favorite people, right? Jess and Jeremiah Sowers and their wonderful family from Roots and Refuge Farm, this is the angle we're going at.

Now normally this is what I do. I hold a camera and I open a door and share a seat at the table of my life with you. But this can be a little bit difficult, you know, sometimes trying to be present, trying to get work done, trying to tell a good story. It's hard when you're also trying to be a cameraman and a producer and a director all in one. I'm gonna hand this off to these guys and I'm just gonna live my life.

In this video, I'm giving you tease shots of episode 2 of Wilder Still with Jess and Jeremiah. This theme is them starting over from ground zero, getting things on the ground.

It's been a pretty wild few months of transition. But it's starting to feel like home, like we live here. It's been a few whirlwind months. There's been so much change. It's definitely been a lot of hard work, but we knew when we made this move that we were literally like digging up the root system of our life and and transplanting it. It was not going to be the kind of thing that was a trial run or a test. We were, we were going.

Another cool thing about this is when you watch Roots and Refuge, it's, it's mainly Jessica. She does the mostly the media stuff, and Jeremiah's kind of behind the scenes really doing a lot on the farm. Now we get to see more of Jeremiah as well.

Okay, we're gonna head down and check out the pigs. I gotta check on the two, uh, breeder mamas that should be having babies any day. These are the two, uh, pregnant mamas. They're the Mangalitsa breed that we raise on our farm. She should have had her piglets already. I don't think anything's wrong. I think she's just taking longer than when we were anticipating. I moved them out here wanting to get them away from the other pigs because I don't know how they're going to behave with piglets. I know that these two mamas won't hurt each other or each other's kids. I put them on this particular space because this is actually going to be the future site of a high tunnel greenhouse. So we built the pen the exact size of the greenhouse and we're letting them tear the grass up and fertilize it a little bit. So we've got a small herd of goats. We downsized when we got here. We actually found someone to take a good portion of our herd. We've got 3 alpacas on the farm. They're really just novelty. Jessica has always wanted alpacas, and so we have them. And they're in their older age, and so they're basically just retired. We're not going to breed them or do anything with them. They're just going to live out the rest of their days, however many that is. You better quit. He's probably not gonna stop.

That's one of the cool things about this third-person perspective. I mean, you can watch Jess's vlogs, I mean, you can watch our vlogs, but there's something special about when we hand it over to a film crew and they film us. Other people get in the show and and you get that bigger perspective, that more holistic perspective, that is just priceless. Beyond that, what I really like about Justin and German, what they're doing there is they're starting over, and they're starting over in a very regenerative way. Here's an example with their meat chickens.

Now we have these birds on grass, and we will be moving them in these electric netting fences and we'll move them every couple of days to new grass. They're powered by solar panels, and that makes them super mobile because we don't have to worry about where we're going to plug them in. And obviously that's also energy efficient because we're not having to pay for power. By moving them every day, we are growing our birds. They're able to forage, they're able to eat grass and insects, which makes for healthy, happy birds. And also we are growing our grass. So on a regenerative farm, your grass is one of your greatest commodities. Your grass and your soil— keeping those healthy means that everything else on your farm is going to be able to thrive on that grass and in that soil. And by moving these birds every couple days, they're fertilizing it, and the grass that they leave behind is going to be super lush.

And something that's very different than the normal homestead content is Jess and Jeremiah have this bigger dream, and one of their dreams is to convert this— bring life. I shouldn't say convert, just bring life to this amazing little town. Here's a little glimpse of their village and that town.

There's an old downtown area. There's so much history here, and I'm so wooed by it. It's just so romantic to me, and the history— I just feel like this whole town is full of stories, and they're just waiting on somebody to care enough about them to learn them and tell them and add to them. From the very beginning of wanting to come to this area, we would drive down this little downtown area. It's just a couple of blocks, and we would see all these empty stores, and we would say, well, what would it look like for these to to be full of life. And we know we want to own a coffee shop and a roasting company. We know we want to own a homesteading mercantile where people can come. But I don't just drive through here looking for where our dream's going to go. I imagine this whole place full of life and lots of dreams coming true here.

All this transition, this change, it begs the questions, well, how are the kids handling it? And Jess, of course, has a beautiful answer and perspective on that.

I think probably the hardest part of our transition is prioritizing being emotionally available for our children because our children are transitioning. It's the largest change that they've ever gone through in their life. They amaze me with their resilience. Even more, they amaze me with how wholly they believe what we tell them. And when we say, hey, we're doing this because of legacy and we're doing this because when you're adults, we're gonna have all the opportunity in the world to give to you. They believe us, and they're just in.

Jess, of course, goes into that more, and it's a touching moment. It's definitely one of my favorite moments. And I complimented the filmmakers on this next moment. It's this casual interview on the swing. It feels like we're right there with Jessica. I think that's what many of us want from her is, and as she would say, "Come have a seat at my table," you know, so we're gonna have a seat at her table. In this case, we're gonna sit right behind her while she's swinging, looking over this. We're gonna look over this beautiful pond together, and she's gonna cast a vision for us.

Every time I start thinking, "How are we gonna work this out? How are we gonna figure this out?" I come and I sit right here in the swing. I don't have to figure out how to work it out. I just have to believe that it's gonna be okay. And these dreams that are put in our heart and these things that we feel passionate about, I just have to live my life as if they're important and as if they're blessed and as if it is something that we're supposed to do and keep first things first. You know, the tree and the pond, that's really not up to me to make that kind of thing happen. And I feel like all of the dreams that we have kind of fall in that category. Building this farm and our learning center and our reach and all the teaching we want to do, it's just the very same as this tree in this pond. I don't have to figure out how that stuff is going to happen. I just have to take care of what's right in front of me.

So that's just a little bit, a little bit of Wilder Steel, the new episode. It's 22 minutes in length. That's the second one, so there's a first one too. And they're both now streaming on Abundance Plus. Please go there and enjoy. It's abundanceplus.com. I'll leave the link in the description. Enjoy.