How I Unbecame a Homestead Influencer

Shedding the old identity but keeping the living parts…

I thought the homesteading part of me had gone quiet. Maybe even died.

I suspected it was burnout. Or at least, I thought that’s what it was.

But I now realize there was something deeper at play… Less about tomatoes and chores and old routines, and more about identities—the ones we choose, the ones that choose us, and the ones that fit for a season until suddenly, they don’t.

Those of you who are newer to me and my writings may not know that homesteading, and sharing it online has been one of the biggest identities of my adult life.

I didn’t set out to become a homestead influencer. (Honestly, the term “influencer” still makes me want to barf.) I was just a young mom on the Wyoming prairie who felt lonely and restless and hungry for something real. I wanted to raise my children differently. I wanted something more than the shallow facade of modern life.

Homesteading was exactly right for me at the time.

But it wasn’t cool back then and people around me didn’t understand it. I often felt dismissed and even judged. We got raised eyebrows when we brought home chickens and goats, and “Ew, gross!” comments when I talked about making homemade yogurt. But I was so excited by what I was learning I needed a place to talk about why these skills mattered to me.

So I started a homesteading blog—one of the first of its kind, way before “homesteading” was a polished Instagram category. Back then, there were a handful of us with clunky Blogspot sites, fuzzy photos, and an insatiable craving to live differently.

And my little blog grew. Over time, it branched into social media accounts and books and courses and a YouTube channel and a podcast and all the other things.

And I loved it. ALL of it. Both homesteading and my newfound penchant for entrepreneurship. It changed my life in nearly every way, and I’m profoundly grateful for all of it.

But something happens when the thing you love becomes the thing you’re known for.

At first, it was just life… but then it became content.

Then content became a business.

Then the business became an identity.

Then the identity became an expectation.

And that’s when things start to get muddy.

Because when your life becomes your work (which is a gift in many ways) it’s easy to lose track of where your real desire ends and the public expectation begins.

Suddenly, every season and project and experiment had the potential to become a tutorial, a photo, a podcast, a blog post, or a video.

A garden wasn’t just a garden. A loaf of bread wasn’t just a loaf of bread. A chicken coop wasn’t just a chicken coop.

It was all part of the story people expected me to keep telling.

That’s not right or wrong… it just is.

Now at this point in the story, people might accuse me of mere performance or of only living this lifestyle to “make money.”

That was absolutely not the case. I loved the skills and farming and food with every fiber of my being.

But it became increasingly heavy under the weight of producing content and providing more, more, more for the public. Plus the constant wondering if people would be disappointed if I wasn’t constantly expanding, producing, building, growing, or proving.

And of course, as more homestead influencers came onto the scene, and the whole thing became even more crowded, more performative, and more loaded. Homesteading became tangled up with aesthetics, politics, purity tests and internet scorecards.

And whatever affection I still had for the “movement” took a steep nosedive.

I started wondering: Am I done with this? Was that just a season? What remains if that identity falls away?

For a while, I was okay with not knowing. I explored other parts of myself. I wrote about deeper things. I let myself outgrow the box a little. I stopped forcing myself to care about things simply because they were “on brand.”

I gave myself permission to be more than just the “homestead girl.” And that was necessary. Oh so necessary. But just when I felt at peace with laying the whole thing to rest—maybe even forever—something interesting happened.

I moved this spring.

And as I was packing cabinets and drawers, I was confronted with so many artifacts of my homesteading identity.

Soapmaking supplies. Sprouting lids. Cheese presses. Fermenting crocks. Jars. (SO many jars.)

I hadn’t forgotten about them entirely, but they’d been buried under layers of burnout and the low-grade blah that had settled over so much of homesteading for me. Once upon a time, those tools had represented possibility, but over the past couple years, they’d become just one more thing I was supposed to care about.

But that day, instead of feeling the usual blah, I felt the most unexpected spark.

I started thinking about sprouts on the counter. About keeping chickens on a smaller scale. About rendering a fresh batch of tallow. About organizing the new barn. About making my new place feel alive and rooted.

And I realized that maybe I wasn’t done with homesteading after all… Maybe I was just done with the bloated, complicated version of it.

I’ve been in my new house for nearly three weeks and I’m feeling a buzz of excitement I haven’t felt in years.

Yes, part of it is the new place. But more than anything, I think it’s the size of it.

It’s smaller. More manageable. Less grand. Less impressive.

And it feels strangely wonderful.

The big, fancy stuff I had was a gift in so many ways. The expansive gardens, the sprawling greenhouse, the fancy milking parlor, the big beautiful life I built around all of it. I’m profoundly grateful I experienced it for a time.

But there is a burden that comes with maintaining something large, especially when that “something” is not just physical, but public.

And frankly, I don’t want that right now.

I just want humble, simple, and enough.

I want to come back to the reasons I started chasing this lifestyle in the first place: the old skills, the good food, the satisfaction of figuring things out, the respect for seasons, the belief that convenience isn’t always the highest good.

Those are the parts I’m keeping. And I’m walking away from the titles and labels, the pressure to do everything huge, the belief that I must be one thing forever, and most of all—the fear of disappointing people by changing.

I will no longer be trapped by a version of myself that once fit but has now grown too small.

I think most of us carry identities like that. Not bad ones, necessarily. They may even be beautiful identities— roles and labels that were once deeply right for us.

But at some point, they start to feel tight. And sometimes they need to fall away— not because they were false, but because you outgrew them.

Right now most of all, I’m reminding myself that identity shifts are not always failure or regression. They can be growth and discernment and what happens when you give yourself permission to become more honest.

So I guess I’m not burning down my homesteading chapter after all. At least not completely. I’m simply letting it become right-sized again.

It will be a piece of me, but not all of me. A practice, but not a prison. A passion, but not a performance.

And I’m excited— for the first time in a long time.

My new life is small and humble and simple, but it feels so me.

And yes, I’ll bring you along for the ride. But not in an “I know everything, let me teach you all my perfected systems” sort of way. More like: pull up a chair and let’s chat while I figure this out.

So I’m bucking allll the labels right now— especially the “homesteader” and the “influencer” ones.

I’m just doing me, paying attention to what makes me feel alive.

And right now, that is more than enough.

-Jill

P.S. Yes, I read Yesteryear and was entertained by it, even though I rarely consume pop fiction. I have thoughts— maybe I’ll share them in a future podcast episode.