Everyone Is Quitting Homesteading. DON'T Make Their Mistake

Fear got a lot of people into homesteading, and it's the exact reason most of them are walking away.

Five years ago, homesteading felt like the beginning of a movement. Now Marketplace is full of chicken coops, freeze dryers, incubators, and canning supplies, and I've been noticing the shift.

People who once posted daily about their gardens haven't planted one this year. Some are openly saying they're done. Others have moved on without much explanation. That got me asking why so many jumped in around 2020 only to walk away a few years later.

Fear is a strong motivator. Empty grocery shelves pushed millions of people to learn skills they'd never considered before, and I think that was a good thing. Once fear fades and life gets comfortable again, most people drop the lifestyle… but I'm still out here living it. The goats still yell at me on Saturday mornings. The weeding never ends. Canning butter at 2 a.m. is a real thing that happens.

There's also a comparison problem worth naming. You can't see the family money, the inherited knowledge, or the nanny behind the picture-perfect homestead you're measuring yourself against.

This episode is my honest read on why people quit, what the ones who stay have in common, and why starting small in your kitchen matters more than trying to run a full operation on day one.

You’ll Learn:

[0:00] Introduction

[3:44] The fear behind the 2020 homesteading boom

[6:13] Butter-canning at 2AM, and what it taught me about homesteading

[7:54] Why biting off everything at once burns new homesteaders out

[10:28] The sunshine-and-rainbows myth versus losing livestock and storm-wrecked gardens

[14:26] Why anyone can homestead, and the gatekeeping that says otherwise

Related Gubba Homestead Episodes:

11 Easy Things You Can Do Today to Start Homesteading (From Anywhere)

Hello, and welcome back to the Gubba Homestead Podcast. I'm Gubba, a first-time homesteader following in the footsteps of my homesteading forebears. Here we talk about everything from homesteading and food preservation to natural living, preparedness, and everything in between. Today we're talking about something I've been noticing a lot lately: why it seems like everyone is quitting homesteading.

Before we get into today's episode, I want to thank the sponsor of today's podcast, my small skincare business, Arvoti.

One of my favorite parts about running Arvoti isn't making skincare—it's reading the messages from people who tell me they finally found something that works for their skin after trying product after product for years. It's something I never imagined when I made my very first tallow balm in my own kitchen. Today, every product is still handcrafted in small batches with simple, nourishing ingredients because I believe skincare doesn't have to be complicated.

If you'd like to support both this podcast and my small business, you can browse the entire collection at Arvoti.com.

Now, let's get into today's episode.

Have you noticed something lately? Five years ago it felt like everyone wanted to become a homesteader. Social media was overflowing with sourdough starters, raised garden beds, backyard chickens, pressure canners, and people announcing they were leaving the city to live a simpler life. Suddenly everyone wanted to grow tomatoes, milk goats, bake bread from scratch, and preserve enough food to fill an entire pantry. It felt like the beginning of a movement, and honestly, I think in many ways it was. But now, if you look around, something has changed.

Marketplace is full of chicken coops, freeze dryers, incubators, canning supplies, and livestock. People who once posted daily about their gardens haven't planted one this year. Some openly admit they gave up, while others have simply moved on to something else. It made me start wondering why. Why did so many people jump into homesteading, only to leave it a few years later?

I think one of the biggest reasons so many people flocked to homesteading in 2020 was because the world reminded us just how fragile convenience really is. Grocery store shelves were empty. You couldn't always find flour, yeast, toilet paper, or even basic ingredients. For the first time in decades, millions of people realized how dependent they'd become on systems completely outside their control. That realization pushed people to ask questions they had never considered before. What if I grew some of my own food? What if I learned to preserve it?

What if I raised chickens? Those were good questions, and I actually think that season introduced a lot of people to skills they may never have discovered otherwise. But fear has a funny way of motivating us. It can convince us to start something, yet once life becomes comfortable again, fear usually fades. Then you're left with the lifestyle itself, and that's when the real question begins: do you actually enjoy this, or were you simply responding to a moment in history?

Because once the grocery stores were stocked again, the work didn't disappear. Chickens still wanted breakfast every morning. Gardens still needed watering during the hottest week of summer. Fruit trees still needed pruning, weeds still needed pulling, jars still needed washing, and the goats certainly didn't care that you wanted to sleep in on Saturday.

Homesteading doesn't take weekends off. There are no pauses because you're busy, burned out, or not feeling motivated. Nature doesn't operate on our schedule. Eventually every homesteader reaches a point where the excitement wears off and the routine settles in. That, in my opinion, is where people either fall in love with the lifestyle…or quietly begin walking away from it.

I think that's because a lot of people underestimate what homesteading actually is. They think it's gardening. Or chickens. Or baking bread. But those are just activities. Homesteading is really about repetition. It's doing the same things over and over again, season after season, year after year.

Every spring you plant. Every summer you weed. Every fall you preserve. Every winter you prepare to do it all over again. There isn't really a finish line where you finally arrive and everything becomes easy. The chores never end because life itself never ends. And oddly enough, that's exactly what many lifelong homesteaders love about it. There is something deeply satisfying about living with the seasons instead of constantly trying to outrun them.

I also think people sometimes compare their beginning to someone else's finished chapter. A family like Ballerina Farm has inspired millions of people to dream about slowing down and living closer to the land, and I completely understand why.

Their content is beautiful and has encouraged countless people to try baking bread, raising animals, and growing food. But every homestead is different. Some families start with decades of experience. Others begin with significant financial resources. Some have employees or extended family helping behind the scenes.

Others are trying to homestead after getting home from a full-time job while raising three kids. None of those situations are wrong—they're simply different. The mistake is believing your homestead has to look like someone else's in order to be successful.

The people I know who have stuck with homesteading for years all seem to have one thing in common. They genuinely enjoy the work itself. They aren't waiting for the chores to end so they can enjoy life. The chores are part of the life they enjoy. They like kneading bread because they enjoy the feel of the dough in their hands.

They don't mind spending an afternoon canning tomatoes because they know exactly how rewarding it feels to open those jars in January. They smile when they collect eggs, not because anyone else is watching, but because those small moments still bring them joy after hundreds, maybe thousands, of mornings. That kind of appreciation is difficult to explain until you've experienced it yourself.

If you're looking for the easiest way to feed your family, homesteading probably isn't it. If you're looking for the cheapest hobby, this definitely isn't it. Animals get sick. Equipment breaks. Gardens fail. Storms flatten crops.

Sometimes you spend months growing something only to lose it in a single afternoon. There are moments that are frustrating, exhausting, and honestly heartbreaking. But if you truly love the process, those setbacks don't convince you to quit. They simply become another part of the story. You learn, you adjust, and next season you try again.

That mindset is what separates people who stay from people who leave.
Ironically, I don't think everyone quitting homesteading is a bad thing. Trends come and go. They always have. But homesteading was never meant to be a trend in the first place. It's a lifestyle built on patience, consistency, and finding joy in ordinary work that most people would rather avoid.

The people who stay aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest farms or the prettiest gardens. They're the ones who discover they actually love waking up early to feed animals, love watching seeds become meals, love filling shelves with food they grew themselves, and love learning skills that connect them to generations before them. Those people would probably keep doing it even if nobody ever saw a single picture of their garden.

Maybe that's the biggest lesson I've learned through all of this. Homesteading isn't something you do because it's popular. It isn't something you do because someone else inspired you. Those things might get you started, but they won't keep you going. The only thing that keeps you going is falling in love with the process itself.

When you stop chasing the picture-perfect version of homesteading and start appreciating the simple rhythm of planting, harvesting, preserving, feeding animals, and caring for the land, something changes. The work no longer feels like an obstacle standing between you and the lifestyle.

The work becomes the lifestyle. And once you reach that point, you stop asking whether homesteading is worth it, because somewhere along the way you realize you were never working toward a destination at all.

You were simply building a life that finally felt like home.