http://www.simplehobbyhomesteading.com/

Simple Hobby Homesteading, Boonville, IN (2026)

05/24/2026

some surprise critters on the homestead today!
https://youtu.be/_7v6MHf96zA?si=mMBo47x_4QqGthhM

~Jhenna

05/14/2026

There’s a peculiar stretch of highway between Boonville, Indiana and Monroe, Wisconsin where time stops behaving properly.

The miles move both painfully slow and impossibly fast… like an old farmer telling a story he doesn’t want to end while simultaneously glancing at his watch because chores still need doing.

I drove that road again this week.

North to the land that raised me.
South to the land that became my life.

And somewhere between the rolling hills, dairy farms, weathered barns, and gas station coffee strong enough to remove paint, I found myself thinking about the strange privilege of having two places that feel like home.

Wisconsin will always belong to my bones.

It’s in the limestone buildings and the black-and-white Holsteins grazing like they own the place. It’s in Friday night fish fry, gravel roads, and the particular smell of summer fields after rain. It’s the place where everybody knows not only your name, but probably your grandparents’ names too… along with one mildly embarrassing story from 1994.

Wisconsin holds so much of my heart:

Parents.
Grandparents.
Aunts.
Uncles.
Cousins.
My brother.
My sister-in-law.
My nephew.

People I adore with the fierce loyalty only small-town roots can grow.

Leaving them never gets easier.

And yet…

About halfway home, something shifts.

The truck keeps rolling south, and my heart starts pulling toward Indiana too… toward my husband, my sons, the farm, the church, the friends, the worn paths between barn and house, and the life we’ve built with muddy boots, stubborn faith, and whatever level of energy remains after unloading feed and arguing with livestock.

Indiana stopped feeling temporary a long time ago.

Seventeen years will do that to a person.

It’s home now too.

Which creates an interesting emotional predicament for a middle-aged woman barreling down the interstate with snacks in the passenger seat and approximately twelve conflicting emotions riding shotgun.

Because I hate leaving Wisconsin.

And I can’t wait to get home.

How is that possible?

Nature offers few clues.

The Canadian geese don’t seem conflicted. They simply honk aggressively overhead like feathered project managers and commit to the journey.

Meanwhile, humans complicate everything.

We stand in driveways hugging relatives one more time.
We wave until the car disappears.
We drive away blinking suspiciously at the windshield while insisting we are absolutely fine.

Then somewhere half way through Illinois, we start craving our own beds and wondering if the chickens were adequately supervised before we left.

And then finally…

After hours of highway and coffee stops and podcasts fading into silence…

I turn onto our lane.

Everything changes there.

The world narrows down to gravel crunching beneath the tires and tall trees arching overhead like they’ve been waiting for me to come back. The woods close in around the truck in the best possible way… green (40 shades of green if you must know but that’s a story for another day), quiet, familiar.

No traffic.
No noise.
No expectations.

Just the deep Indiana woods and the little patch of earth we’ve carved out for ourselves.

There is something almost sacred about that last stretch of driveway.

The farther back I drive, the more the noise of the world falls away. My shoulders loosen. My breathing slows. The homestead comes into view piece by piece like an old friend stepping out from behind the trees.

And for a moment, everything feels exactly as it should.

Not perfect in the polished magazine sense.

Perfect in the real sense.

Mud on boots.
Work waiting tomorrow.
Dogs barking.
Laundry probably still in the dryer.
A thousand unfinished projects.

But home.

Deep in the woods, surrounded by the life we built one stubborn but amazing day at a time, it feels like exhaling after holding your breath for hours.

That feeling is hard to explain to people who’ve never loved a piece of land so much it became part of them.

Wisconsin raised me.

Indiana remade me.

And somehow my heart belongs completely to both.

Life, it seems, can hold two truths at once.

You can deeply love where you came from while deeply loving where you ended up.

You can miss people while feeling grateful for the people waiting back home.

You can ache for one place while longing for another.

Maybe that tension isn’t something to solve.

Maybe it’s just evidence of a life well loved.

And honestly, after all these years, I’m not sure I need it to make sense anymore.

I’ll be back in Wisconsin in a couple weeks because apparently I’m incapable of staying away for long.

But I’ll also be relieved when I pull back into our gravel lane again, disappearing into the woods toward the people, animals, and imperfect beautiful life waiting there.

That’s the thing about home.

Sometimes it’s not one place.

Sometimes it’s every piece of land, every porch light, every family table, and every gravel road that helped shape who you became.

And if you’re blessed, you spend your whole life carrying those places with you.

My motto has become:
Do what you can, with whatever you have, wherever you are.

Even if “wherever you are” is somewhere between two homes, loving both with your whole heart and understanding neither completely.

~Jhenna

05/11/2026

There are moments in rural life when a person must pause… not from fear exactly… but from the overwhelming realization that civilization is hanging by a single rusty hinge and three optimistic zip ties.

This morning’s adventure began innocently enough. A quiet walk to the woods. The sort of stroll nature documentaries describe with soothing narration:

“Here we see the semi-feral homesteader in her natural habitat… checking for deer fawns while mentally inventorying feed buckets, fencing supplies, and whether that smell is compost or consequence.”

The gravel lane stretched ahead in all its pastoral glory. Birds chirped. The breeze whispered through the trees. Somewhere in the distance, a chicken plotted my downfall.

And then… I saw it.

A stick.

Not just any stick.

No, this was a crafted stick. A sharpened, stripped-down, suspiciously intentional woodland shiv lying in the gravel like Exhibit A in a future documentary called Farm Crimes: Episode 7… The Rooster Uprising.

The kind of object that makes you stop mid-step and quietly reassess every life decision that brought you to this exact patch of limestone.

Now, could it have simply fallen from a tree and broken naturally?

Absolutely.

But where’s the drama in that?

This thing looked hand-carved by either:

* a wandering survivalist,
* an 11-year-old with ambition,
* or a chicken named Brenda who’s finally had enough.

Naturally, I did what any responsible citizen of the countryside would do:
I stared at it suspiciously from several angles…
considered fingerprints and forensic evidence…
and left it exactly where it lay.

Because if the woodland creatures are organizing, I’d prefer not to tamper with evidence before the authorities arrive.

There’s a certain mood settling over the property lately. Not panic exactly. More like… “low-budget apocalypse preparedness with snacks.” The kind where you casually wonder if you should stock extra batteries while simultaneously debating whether raccoons understand tactical warfare.

Still, chaos around here remains mostly controlled.

Mostly.

As always, the guiding philosophy remains:

Do what you can, with whatever you have, wherever you are.

Even if “wherever you are” currently appears to be the opening scene of a deeply underfunded survival thriller narrated by a tired park ranger.

Anyway, if I disappear mysteriously, question the chickens first.

~Jhenna

05/05/2026

There are moments on a homestead… quiet, reflective, almost sacred… when a woman stands at the kitchen counter, surveying the aftermath of a modern hunt.

Not deer. Not elk.
No… this was Amazon.

The box sat there like a fallen soldier. Corners blown out. Flaps shredded. Packing paper crumpled in defeat, as if it had put up a respectable fight but ultimately succumbed to a more primal force. A force not unlike a black bear in spring… hungry, determined… and apparently raised in my house.

I ran my hand along the jagged edge of cardboard, torn, not cut. Never cut. No blade had touched this box. No precision. No ceremony. Just raw, unfiltered access. The kind of entry that says, “There was something inside, and I wanted it five seconds ago.”

Now, I know men. I married one. That man, Kevin, approaches a box with the calm authority of a surgeon. A knife appears. The tape is sliced with reverence. The flaps open like the pages of a well-loved book. It’s civilized. Respectful. Almost spiritual.

And yet… somehow… we also raised two sons.

Grown men now. Twenty-seven and twenty-two. Fully capable of paying taxes, holding jobs, and…presumably… operating basic tools. And still… when faced with a sealed package… they revert.

No knife. No hesitation.
Just hands.

They descend upon the box like woodland creatures who’ve caught the scent of granola bars in a backpack. There is tearing. There is ripping. There are sounds… unsettling sounds… like drywall losing an argument. By the time they’re done, the box looks like it lost a bar fight with a raccoon.

I stood there, looking at the wreckage, and couldn’t help but wonder… is this generational? Is this instinct? Is there something deep in the DNA of young men that whispers, “Tools are optional… but destruction is efficient”?

Because somewhere between my husband’s careful incision and my sons’ full-contact cardboard assault lies the great divide of manhood.

And me?
I document it. I observe it. I survive it.

Because out here, in the wilds of southern Indiana, where goats climb things they shouldn’t, pigs plot daily jailbreaks, and German Shepherds stand ready to defend me from aggressive crickets…

We also face the lesser-known, but equally destructive force of nature:

Young men opening packages.

And at the end of it all, standing over the shredded remains of what was once a perfectly good box, I remind myself…

Do what you can…
with what you have…
wherever you are.

~Jhenna

05/03/2026

There are moments in life when a person stands at the crossroads of dignity and a pair of mildly offensive trash bags… and chooses to keep driving.

This morning began with good intentions, the kind that whisper, today, we are responsible adults. Two bags of household refuse were ceremoniously placed in the back of my truck, destined for the noble outpost of civilization known as “the trash cans down the lane.” Trash cans, that if I may be allowed to boast for a moment, were empty because I was responsible and made it to the dump yesterday! So this, just two bags going into the empty cans, this was a simple mission. Routine. Almost heroic in its modesty.

And yet… somewhere between the gravel crunch of departure and the open road’s promise, those bags staged a quiet rebellion. Halfway to town, I realized they were still there, riding high in the truck bed like tourists on a scenic tour, clinging to their new identity as travel companions of a forgetful, middle-aged woman with questionable follow-through.

Now, I am not a litterer. Not by accident, not by neglect, and certainly not by airborne garbage bag betrayal at 55 miles per hour. So I drove cautiously, like a woman transporting unstable cargo… which, in a sense, I was. The wind whispered. The bags rustled. Nature itself seemed to lean in, curious how this would unfold.

Then came the idea.

A small-town gas station. Familiar faces. A place where coffee is strong, conversations are stronger, and yes… dumpsters exist. It was perfect. In theory.

But the human mind is a peculiar wilderness.

As I drove those final miles, I wandered deep into the brush of overthinking. Should I explain everything? Assure them there were no suspicious contents? No contraband? No hastily discarded evidence of a crime that definitely did not occur? Or would such a speech only raise more questions than it settled? Should I buy something first, perhaps a peace offering of turkey jerky or a pop to grease the wheels of small-town diplomacy?

Fifteen minutes is a long time to negotiate with yourself.

At last, I arrived. The truck idled. The bags remained loyal. And there she was, one of my favorite managers, a steady hand in the unpredictable ecosystem of rural commerce.

I stepped inside, delivered a trimmed-down version of my internal monologue, mercifully leaving out the part about dead bodies, and simply asked if I could toss my trash in their dumpster.

She smiled. “Yup, no problem. Thanks for asking.”

Just like that.

No interrogation. No raised eyebrows. No need to defend my innocence in the court of convenience store law. She even mentioned they watch the cameras for unauthorized dumping and would let the other managers know I had been granted official clearance, like some kind of sanctioned garbage operative.

And with that, the mission concluded.

The bags were released. The road remained clean. My reputation, intact.

Sometimes the wildest journeys aren’t measured in miles, but in the distance between overthinking and simply asking.

And as I drove away, lighter in both truck and spirit, I was reminded once again:

Do what you can, with whatever you have, wherever you are.

05/01/2026

To the dump, to the dump, to the dump dump dump…

There are battle hymns, and then there are the songs a woman sings to herself while staring down a trailer full of consequences. This one, set loosely to the gallop of The Lone Ranger, is less about heroism and more about inevitability.

Because today… is dump day. Two weeks of procrastination have ripened into something formidable. A barn mid-cleanout, a basement in rebellion, a homestead shedding its winter skin… all of it culminating in one undeniable truth: the trailer is full, the bins are overflowing, and the clock is ticking.

Out here, time is not measured in minutes. It is measured in pig escapes. Seven days. That’s how long it’s been since the last great uprising. Seven days since the pigs, motivated not by hunger but by what I can only describe as recreational destruction, toppled trash cans and redecorated the woods with the remnants of my domestic ambition.

I walked those woods like a curator of chaos, gathering plastic relics from branches and brush, one crinkled bag at a time. Glamorous? No. Educational? Deeply. I am one overturned bin away from unraveling, and so, with calm resolve and a healthy respect for swine anarchy, I prepare to make the pilgrimage.

And here’s the twist: I love the dump. It’s not a place, it’s an institution. A rural outpost of familiarity where everyone knows your name… or at least your trailer. A place not unlike Cheers, but with more steel, less beer, and significantly higher stakes.

Because at the dump, reputations are built on one thing: your ability to back a trailer.

Now, some people crochet. Some rebuild engines. Me? I reverse with purpose. Seventeen years ago, armed with nothing but stubbornness and a hitch-mounted dream on my Toyota Sienna, I faced down a skeptical attendant named Frank. He looked at me the way a man looks at a situation he fully expects to go sideways. I looked at him the way a woman does when she already knows how this story ends. After a spirited negotiation, he waved me on.

What followed was not merely a maneuver, it was a moment. A clean, swift, surgical reversal. The trailer slid into place like it had been summoned there.

No jackknife.

No hesitation.

Just precision.

Frank’s expression shifted from doubt to something bordering on reverence. And just like that, a legend was born. Over the years, attendants came and went, but the story remained: “The lady with the trailer… let her back it in.”

Of course, every gift comes with its burden. One day, mid-unload, I became the unwilling protagonist in another man’s story. A fellow traveler struggled nearby, his trailer dancing a clumsy waltz of indecision. I paid it little mind… until the attendant approached me with a request that felt less like a favor and more like a social experiment. Would I… step in?

I declined. Politely. Repeatedly. Desperately.

He heard none of it.

Before I could intercept, he had already informed the gentleman that “this little lady” would be handling things.

The air shifted.

Time slowed.

I could feel the weight of generations of pride hanging in the balance. I moved quickly, faster than I thought possible, intercepting the situation with a flurry of reassurances and strategic retreat.

No trailers were harmed that day, but neither was I prepared to wield that kind of power. Not yet.

So here I stand again. Trailer full. Shoulders negotiating their terms…one repaired, one plotting its exit. The pigs are watching. The woods remember. And the dump… the dump awaits.

Because around here, chaos isn’t the enemy. It’s the environment. Managed. Navigated. Occasionally outpaced.

And if today goes sideways? Well…

Do what you can, with whatever you have, wherever you are.

04/30/2026

There are signs in life… subtle indicators… quiet warnings that, if properly observed, can prepare a person for what’s coming.

I, of course… ignored them all.
Because if I’m being honest, I should have known.

The day I picked Kimber up from her previous farm, she didn’t hesitate. No orientation period. No polite introduction to her surroundings. No, she stepped out, assessed the situation… and promptly scaled a tree like it was part of her morning routine.

No fear. No slip. No second thought. Just a small goat with big legs and a complete disregard for gravity.

That was the moment. That was the sign.

And yet… here we are.

Fast forward to present day, just a week later, and Kimber has not only embraced her identity, she has refined it. Elevated it. Quite literally. Because what you’re looking at here is not a goat enjoying a peaceful afternoon.

This is a climber.

A specialist.

A creature who looks at a perfectly reasonable tree and thinks, “Yes… but what if I were up there?”

She doesn’t climb like she’s trying something new. She climbs like she’s remembering something ancient. Like somewhere deep in her DNA, a distant ancestor stood on the edge of a mountain and said, “Higher.”

Meanwhile, down below, R***r continues his role as his twin sister’s self-appointed safety inspector. Same legs. Same potential. Entirely different life choices. He watches Kimber with the steady gaze of someone who has read the incident report before the incident occurs.

You can almost hear him thinking: “Unnecessary. Excessive. Not recommended.”

But Kimber does not consult R***r.

She does not consult me.

She does not consult anyone.

She simply climbs.

And I stand there, once again, not the victim of chaos… but its narrator. A witness to a lifestyle choice I cannot control but have come to deeply respect.

So now, plans are forming. Adjustments must be made. Because when you own a goat who treats vertical surfaces like invitations, you don’t try to change her.

You adapt.

You build.

You prepare.

Because Kimber isn’t going to stop climbing.

She told me that the very first day.

I just wasn’t listening.

~Jhenna

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