Hey ya’ll, I’m Jess from Roots & Refuge Farm
Welcome to a place that feels like home. A small farm with a big family. We hope you’ll pull up a chair, grab some coffee and visit awhile.
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 is 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 our journey, friend. I am so glad you’re here.
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WHERE TO FIND US (Some of the links here are affiliate links. If you purchase through our links we’ll receive a small commission but the price remains the same – OR BETTER – for you! Be sure to check for any mentioned discount codes.)
– Our Website: https://rootsandrefuge.com
– Sign up for our newsletter: https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-signup
– Join our Patreon to get early access to podcasts and other information, plus monthly LIVES with me and Miah: https://patreon.com/rootsandrefuge
– Abundance+ (Grab a FREE 7-day trial): https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-wilder-still
– Shop our Stickers & Shirts: https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-shop
– Order my first book, “First Time Gardener”: https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-ftgbook
– Order my second book, “First Time Homesteader”: https://rootsandrefuge.com/first-time-homesteader-yt
– Instagram: www.instagram.com/roots_and_refuge
– Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rootsandrefugefarm
– Email Us: rootsandrefuge@yahoo.com
– To drop us a line:
PO Box 4239
Leesville SC 29070
– To have a gift sent to our house from our Amazon wishlist: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/SFA0IZHZRCOZ?ref_=wl_share
– To support us through PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/jessicasowards
-Our music is by our friend Daniel Smith
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PRODUCTS WE LOVE – You’ve probably heard me talk about these things a million times, so here’s where you can order them (and get a discount with my code!):
– Greenstalk Vertical Gardens (Use code “ROOTS10” for $10 off your order): https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-greenstalk
– Squizito Tasting Room (Use code “ROOTS” for 10% off your order): https://rootsandrefuge.com/yt-squizito
– ButcherBox: https://rootsandrefuge.com/butcherbox
– Growers Solution: https://rootsandrefuge.com/growers-solution
#rootsandrefuge
40 Comments
Jess, you speak so much truth talking about the anxiety, depression on top of just feeding you and your family. Gardening is healing me on a myriad of levels and will be healing my family on a physical level as much as possible. My husband has so many health problems stemming from diabetes and is a below the knee amputee. He is not able to do a lot anymore so this is something he can help with since he can do the plants in pots on our deck. THANK YOU for all you and Miah do!
Hello Jess . I’m canning up my taters today needed to getter done to save them I need to get my seeds out and ready to start soon can’t wait to see my seedlings come up n wish them happy birthday 😃😃😃😃😃🎉🎊 . GODBLESS sweetie
Now, every time I get a fully ripe red bell pepper, I am going to think of it as my "gold star" moment. Thanks Jess.
I grew up in a cloistered homeschool family in the 1980s and 90s. We were always attempting to grow things. Usually didn't go well because my mother had a brown thumb, but there was always a garden of some sort. A variety of animals as well. In 1996 my parents made the decision to move our family into an Amish Mennonite community and join the church and become part of their culture. Thankfully, Amish ladies know how to grow a garden! I learned so much from very knowledgeable and seasoned gardeners there. I could get anything to grow in red clay! I grew up, left the church and the community when I married my husband and moved to Florida. I got away from gardening and the farm setting for a while because we were living in town in various rental houses. But three and a half years ago my husband and I purchased a home on 1.35 acres, and now it's a real homestead! I dove back into gardening that first spring here, and had my heart broken in a million pieces. I lost everything. No harvest whatsoever. Florida gardening is waaaaaaay different from everywhere else on the planet! The pests, the soil, the weather – aaaagh! But once I started doing my homework and listening to advice from people who have been doing this a long time, I learned to work with Florida and all it was throwing at me, and now Florida is working with me as well. Still got a LOT of learning to do and there are things I still just can't get to grow, but last year's harvest was so beautiful! So much food. I was even able to sell some fresh produce at a time when I really needed the cash.
My advice is talk to someone in your community who has had success in gardening. YouTube how-tos are marvelous, (especially Jess') but all their wonderful advice isn't gonna do squat for you if you're in a totally different growing zone/climate with soil that is nothing like theirs. Take advantage of local wisdom. The ag dept at our local community College does free gardening programs from time to time, and I've also learned a lot that way. They're speaking specifically about things like how to deal with local pests and remedying the sandy&acidic soil in our area, what to plant when, etc. Check to see if there is something like that available in your community. There's knowledge all around us – we just have to harvest it!
Jess, we were at the Chiropractor last week and I complemented a lady on her tshirt. She said she got it from your store! LOL. We're in middle Georgia. Happy Growing!
I post on my personal Facebook of my produce I grow myself from seed. No one gets my excitement. I can always count on the fb group to hype up my tomato 🤣🤣
🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🍻🍻🍻🥃🥃🥃👍👍👍👀👀👀☕️☕️☕️🇺🇸🇺🇸💋
I was young when I realized that I loved “dirt” or soil. My mother loved to flower garden, and I really loved being outside with her tending to the flowers and having my hands all dirty. Fresh dug soil just smelled so good! It still does. When I was older, my husband and I started a wholesale tree and shrub nursery. We learned so much from that! We wholesaled but also hauled our plants to flower shows and loved it so much! We are in our 60’s now, and the nursery is closed but I still grow at home. But now we are growing more food. Each year we dig up more grass to create more room for the garden. I love it all! Flowers, shrubs, herbs, vegetables. Especially tomatoes. Working on having food in the backyard year round now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way! I love the garden!
I have NEVER successfully gotten any brussel sprouts out of my garden! I even bought a net tent to go over them last year to keep out the cabbage moths…..they laid their eggs on the netting and they fell in, hatched, and ruined them. 😫
I will never quit!💪😂 I MUST grow brussel sprouts!
Yep. I'm still "starting" in my waiting/classroom. Coming up on my 4th year without much harvest to show for it all, Jess' words are the encouragement I need to grow in 2023 just for the sake of growing as a gardener. Even if I only get 20 tomatoes and 30 cucamelons, I'll learn something, get a little exercise, and enjoy some beauty. I'm going to go plant some seeds today
Three years ago while we were all shut down, I found you and your family. It was not only a blessing but a huge source of knowledge. Gardening has become a passion for me. Most of my conversations with family
Around the table starts with how is the garden? They get to eat many of its bounty. Even the family learns from our conversations. I just wish Id have a larger space to sow more seeds and watch them grow and provide more delicious fruits and vegetables . I live in Florida, so many tropical veggies and fruits are able to grow here. My 5 banana plants are loaded right now. Perhaps later on a bigger land area can happen. Real estate in my state is very high, so….
Next year, it will finally be a reality for us. Not losing hope. I feel it in my heart. Working to get there. I’m in the waiting room.
As the garden center manager, the last two years.. I tell people there are 3 things you get out of the garden always. Food flowers and lessons! All three are valuable!
My advice for new gardeners or any gardener is build your gardens as if you were handicap, even if you are young, healthy and strong. Things can suddenly change in a split second. Imagine if you couldn't lift more than 5 pounds and couldn't walk without help. You can save a lot of time and money if you plan ahead now. ';D
I always grow what I can, mostly in pots since I am disabled and mobility is very hard. I grew up gardening and it's so hard to not be able to grow my acre garden anymore
I started with a sale on yard timbers and made 3 8×8 beds stacked 4 timbers high… first lesson: you can't reach into the middle of an 8×8 raised bed! So I made 4 8×4" beds…. second lesson: 18" is not enough room to kneel between beds (I'm 5'9"). So.. I made 3 8×4 beds with 3' between the beds. Now that was decades ago and I've come a long way from 100 square feet of garden space. Well over 1000 sq. ft. currently and growing.
Overall lesson: really think about your needs as a gardener when you're laying out your beds. I'm actually doing this right now, as I listen to Jess, because I'm expanding my garden this year to double my usable space, and replacing old beds that just don't work for me anymore. I have back issues and we're minimizing weeding and bending and kneeling.
What I'm doing is making a list of plants I plan to grow.. and noting how high they can reasonably be off the ground and how I plant to support them. Examples: Indeterminate Beefsteak tomatoes, 16" raised bed, cattle panel trellis; Ground cherry 32" raised bed, no support; Winter squash (bush), 16"- 32" bed, stake support; Watermelon, ground mound; Peppers, 16" bed, string weave trellis… you get the idea. Then I decided how many of each I'm going to plant… and in what season (I can grow in all 4 seasons). My current goal in doing this is deciding how many 32" raised beds I can get away with how many 16" beds I really need… because I do need some! I'm not trying to reach tomatoes growing 11 feet in the air either. And my beefsteaks are mighty.
I think one of my favorite things about gardening is the infrastructure (I'm a CAD industrial designer in a past life) and I love recycling gutters, and pumps from broken fountains, and old PVC, roof tin, barn boards, gates and fense. I learned strawbale gardening and absolutely loved that… but it became cost prohibitive over time and "hit or miss" when my organic bale supplier stopped selling to the public on the honor system because they were robbed while on vacation. Stealing the hay out of someone's barn… can you imagine. 😒
I've discovered that damned near anything is a container for gardening if you try hard enough and find the right plants or herbs or flower. My daughter was once really sad because she had outgrown her red Converse hightops… so we filled them potting soil, sat them on a tray, and grew some flowers in them.
I struggled for years to grow from seed until I finally went to an old timer and begged "What am I doing wrong?!?!" he says: "Take the lid off. It's over 55° F during the day. You're cooking your starts." Imagine that… take the lid off. Been doing well ever since. Now I have a greenhouse… so I'm ready to screw things up again! 😆 But I'm going to learn and have a great time..
If you're new to this… start small… but do start! I made a jump from 100 sq. ft to 460 sq. ft. in one season and it was discouraging to go through that serious of a learning curve overnight and I made a lot of mistakes regarding the layout and not concidering local grasses and weeds. The biggest hurdle was "time" because it really threw off my routine. When I started working from home… it became joyful, manageable and then successful. If you're not gardening and you want to garden… I say start small because you'll need to learn to budget your time and strength wisely. And when planning your garden… concider upcoming events. My daughter got married last May; and for the year prior I was so busy making and doing for the wedding that maintenance of my garden space, soil care, weeding, careful mowing just dropped off my radar (side note: hire an invent planner that knows what they're doing if it's over 40 guests, we had 100 and it was shear madness… beautiful wedding though). As a result I found myself getting quotes from landscapers to redo the garden space. Well…. I don't have a spare $30k laying around so we're doing it ourselves for less…. a lot less. It's not so far gone it can't be weeded and used which I did last fall….. but it's not conducive to our future the way it is now. So think about those things.
Or don't! Just start! 😂 There's so much to learn. These are some of my biggest lessons after 25 years… and if you made it this far then hopefully you got something from it!
There is nothing better than a fresh tomato or a fresh cucumber. I don't know what I would do without my garden. I have always had a garden, it's hard to believe that people don't have a garden.
I’ve been gardening for the past 20 years, and always with varying degrees of success. Each year brings different challenges and outcomes. What grew fantastically one year didn’t do as well the next year, and that’s normal. There’s a lot that is out of your control as a gardener. But that’s the beauty of gardening. Each year, you start over with a clean slate, try different things… whether it’s new crop varieties or gardening techniques. You learn to take advantage of that bumper crop you didn’t expect, maybe you try preserving it or try new recipes. And for the crops that didn’t do as well…maybe they got eaten by bugs, or killed in an unexpected frost or heat wave. You learn to let that go. The residual plant matter can go in the compost to feed next years garden, and you figure out what you can do differently next year. There aren’t a lot of times in life where you get a do-over…but gardening is one of them…each and every year. You get to try and try again…because gardening isn’t just a hobby or a passion, it’s a lifetime journey.
I grew up eating fresh cucumbers out of my grandmother’s garden half peeled so it was manageable for my small hands. As an adult (60 now) I’ve been learning how to grow things from seed and finding a new respect for food and how challenging it can be to run the full gambit to get a seed to produce. This year I planted seeds on my new back patio grow shelves only to find it’s too cold for them to germinate right now (south Texas cold snap) so I’ve bought them inside and am trying different things and managed to get some germination but now to keep them alive until I can take them out under the grow lights. (I don’t have space for a shelf indoors). It’s always a learning process! And I do love it! Always feel my grandmother looking down with pride that she instilled that love of gardening in me!
Yes. And every seeds birth another miracle, blessing and reminder that all good things come from God. Also that in fact the foods and medicinals(herbs) were all created by God and we we blessed by the Almighty to be able to consume them for our health to our benefit. 💖💖Glory to God!
This will be my third year and the past two years were failures except my sweet potatoes didn’t totally fail. I am 70 with health issues and severe depression and anxiety and debating on even trying to grow this year. I have two green stalks and hope to feel well enough to grow in them. I haven’t started seeds, will need to buy plants. I so enjoy your videos. ( really like your new hair cut 😊 , BUT i love the immense love and interaction between you and Jeremiah ) God Bless you and your family 😊
This is year number three for us. Years one and two were 90% failures. Seriously, we got hardly anything from our garden. And now this year my husband announced that we are doubling our growing space to 60' x 60'. I was completely overwhelmed by this. My feeling was, "How about we get food from our current garden before we expand." I wanted to throw in the proverbial towel. But then, there's my three-year-old grandson. I watch him three days a week and two weeks ago he started pestering me to plant seeds indoors. I explained to him that it is too early to do seed starts (our frost date is May 27th). But he persevered. How can I tell this little boy who was so proud to serve his pickled beets (all of our beets for the season in this one jar) and broccoli (same with the broccoli) at Christmas dinner, that he can't plant some seeds? So yesterday we planted onion, tomato, and nasturtium seeds (all his choices). I will succession plant these over the next few weeks so that he WILL have seed starts to put into the garden in May. Thanks, Jess, for sharing your wisdom and encouragement!
FACTS!!!💯 what it does for my mental health and peace of mind is so important. I know how I felt before I started and I wouldn't wish that upon anyone!! Everyone should know this level of happiness!!✌❤😁
My first garden growing from seed I burned them sun scalded they got torn up by a high wind they got rained on and waterlogged choked out sunburned again and what survived produced in spite of me
Most things we do for the first time will include some failures but successes too. This is OK. I have enjoyed the quality of the produce. It is all a learning experience. Thanks for sharing.
Jess
I can't eat store tomatoes anymore
It just warms my heart to see my little grandkids go to the garden and pick the small things I grow. The smiles on their faces is worth it all. 💕🥰💕🥰💕 Thank you Jess for your inspiration ❤️🌟⭐️🌟⭐️
There's been several channels I came across, they thought "I'm going to start gardening/homesteading and do a youtube channel about it!"
Some of them I thought they wouldn't last
There were others that I thought was getting along just fine (every garden/homestead will face challenges) and they quit!
Why do I always think she says her name is Jessica Salads ? Lol I thought it was such a fitting name until I realized I misheard it.
😘😍❤ Everything you said is so true!
BTW I don't know if I mentioned it, but I love your hair cut. It looks great.
You are so incredibly correct!!
My personal opinion is…just plant those seeds, you need nothing fancy .. no classes, no special tools.. just learn as you go experience is the best lesson!
This is not a competition on who has the most toys it is about loving gardening and being self sufficient… your amazing Jessica 💜
Thank you so much Jess for sharing your heart and wisdom. Truly. You'll never know how much you've blessed our family by just sharing and being so open and raw and just honest in this process. I'm a new gardener who never realized this was the "goldstar" that was missing in our family's life. What started as a dream in the suburbs has turned into a family passion and mission. Thank you.
I grew up watching my grandmother in her flower beds and my grandfather in his garden. They made it look so easy. Ive tried gardening several times at different addresses (I rent), and even had one landlord tell me that I couldnt have a garden anymore because it was ugly🙄. So I had just about given up because the bugs, the weeds, and tomato black rot seemed to alwsys win. Then about four years ago I had been watching Charles Dowding's channel about no dig…Wow! I could do that…but I got discouraged because I still couldn't keep up with the weeds and me and heat were not good together. The next year I saw Jess's channel. She showed me how to love to garden! I didnt end up canning a ton that year, but I ate out of the garden all summer and it was just beautiful!🌺🦋💜😭 I actually made a thank you video for Jess on my channel so you can see the garden. Im so excited every year now for spring! Thanks Jess..again and again!💜🌻🌻🌻🌻
We used to grow a garden and sell at the Farmer's market. Now we just grow a little we can share with family. This year my granddaughter, who lives in a small apartment with her husband and 2 babies, wants some cherry tomatoes she can set on their deck. I am also going to pot up some dwarf tomatoes for her. Someday she will have a house and garden and she can start learning now. If we needed to grow more , we could, but maybe we can just teach the next generation how to grow.
My 1st plant, tommy toes beside the back door. Instant snacks for kids
I’ve gardened on and off for over 30 years. My favorite thing to do, is go out early in the morning with my coffee and “watch” my plants grow. The produce is so flavorful and it’s difficult to go back to buying my produce from the store. I’m planning a fairly large garden this year and I’m getting excited….it’ll be awhile since I live in Minnesota. I’m actually going out to Washington state next month to help my best friend start growing some greens and tomatoes, it’ll be fun.
Thank you Jess, you are such a blessing. I so enjoy your devotionals and watching your videos. So enjoyable.
This will be my second season. Last year I started small. Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and green beans. I got such joy out of it, so this year I have decided to go a little bit bigger. I'm taking baby steps if you will but I'm learning as I go. Jess you are an inspiration to new and seasoned gardens alike. I want to thank you. ❤
For seven years, my waiting room was my classroom and Jess and a small handful of others were my teachers. Everything she has said here is true. I moved from CO to TN for the express purpose of having a farm. And while there is some bridging of data aquired to implementation, I cannot even begin to express how grateful I am for the things I learned while waiting. Last year, our harvest waa so abundant I could not keep up. New skills in food preservation had to be learned…and quick! Our rabbits and chickens ate like kings! We shared tons of food with our friend and family. But the reward came. Keep to it, don’t give up! Keep learning and grow with that garden! You won’t regret it!
My garden is my happy place… the joy is reason enough 🪴
Also, apparel merch soon please 🙏