Homesteading | Self Sufficient Living | Living off the Land
May 22, 2026
How I'm building a new garden for my new life... I planted seeds before I knew where I was going. I knew separation was likely. I knew life was shifting under my feet. I knew the future would probably look wildly different than the one I had imagined. Yet there I was one blustery February morning, pressing tomato and pepper seeds into damp soil like it was any other year. But it was not any other year. And my gut …
May 14, 2026
Sadness and hope can live in the same room.... I’m okay. I’m saying that a lot lately. Sometimes I say it to other people. Sometimes to myself. Of course there is sadness and disorientation and all the feelings I wrote about last week. But in the midst of it, there are other feelings too. And those feelings are, dare I say, a little trickier to express right now. Ever since I shared my last two essays, I’ve …
May 6, 2026
I thought I knew what community was. I’ve talked about it a lot on my podcast. About building the soda fountain, rallying people in a sleepy Wyoming town, and showing up in a place where there aren’t a lot of people exactly like me. But as it turns out? I didn’t understand it at all. When it came to grasping the essence of real community, I was still in kindergarten. The last three weeks have made that painfully …
April 28, 2026
I have some personal news to share, and for weeks, I’ve been trying to summon the courage to write these words. Christian and I are separating. I use that word because “divorce” still gets stuck in my throat when I speak it. It feels foreign to my fingers when they attempt to type the letters. But there’s no easy way to say it. No way to wrap it in a tidy bow and make it feel less jarring than it is. This is not a category I …
April 14, 2026
“Jill, you’re up first.” The second I hear the words, my stomach flops. My hands quiver as I pull my rope from the saddle and fumble through the coils, trying desperately to look competent while feeling the exact opposite. You see, the movies have it all wrong. They make you think when you finally do the thing you’ve wanted your whole life, it will feel heroic. Cue the epic soundtrack. Slow-motion victories. The …
April 8, 2026
I don't cook like I used to. Actually, let me rephrase that. I cook a ton. I own a restaurant, and I just finished the manuscript for my second cookbook (it’s coming in October—eek). I cook every single day for many people. But my personal cooking rhythms have drastically changed over the years. I don’t know why that’s surprised me. I guess I naively assumed I’d be in the same little kitchen pattern forever. But life changes, …
