Seven weeks of vacation was fun, but our farmers’ market starts in two weeks, and there is a backlog of work that needs tackling in order to be ready for opening day. We’ve been making soap, lip balm and candles; cleaning, repairing and updating our display spaces; weaving baskets to [...]

For the past several weeks, our family has been living in Europe. Our itinerary has included a week in England, a month in a rural French village, a week in the South of France, and a week in Paris. After writing a book about home-centered, frugal living, a few readers have raised [...]

My daughters, Saoirse and Ula, are no strangers to four-letter words. They’re growing up with farmers, for crying out loud! And no self-respecting farmer around Schoharie County is going to doll up the natural functions of nature with cutesy euphemisms or scientific jargon. When Saoirse was learning to talk, we tried cleaning up our language [...]

This blog piece was written for my buddy, Dave Smalley, who acted like his brain might explode when I tried to explain to him how a counter-cultural Luddite might benefit from an e-reader. He asked me to write this up so that he could read it, instead of trying to understand [...]

When an email from the group Food Democracy Now! landed in my inbox last week, asking farmers to occupy Wall Street, it seemed only right that I notify the subscribers of Grassfed Cooking—a monthly e-newsletter I run for other farmers of grassfed meats—and ask that they consider joining.
Some farmers, myself included, heeded the call and [...]

Devastation and resilience: Shannon Hayes reports from Schoharie County, New York, which was hard-hit by Hurricane Irene.

It was busy in town Friday and Saturday. Stores and restaurants were filled with New Yorkers and Long Islanders seeking refuge from hurricane Irene, slated to pummel downstate on Sunday.
We were safely outside the storm [...]

What happens when one member of a couple wants to live a new kind of life—but the other doesn’t?
“But you have Bob.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that refrain about my husband since I first began promoting the ideals of radical homemaking. I rarely hear it publicly. [...]

As publishers of a book about ecological, values-centered living, my husband Bob and I have experienced many moments of guilty squeamishness. Because I spent so much time studying the subject, and because we believed in the ideas strongly enough to pony up the cash and take Radical Homemakers to the printer, we feel we’re supposed [...]

My grandfather is dying. He is 92, and just before Christmas he came down with pneumonia. His health and awareness have been in steady decline since then, and his doctors have begun preparing us for the end. Uncle Tommy and Aunt Kimmie, who moved in with him a few years ago, [...]

Yesterday morning, when I finished writing for the day, I signed on to check my email. From the sea of unread messages, one stood out. The subject line, written in all caps, read: HOW DO YOU DO IT ALL?
The more I write, the more I speak, the more I hear this question. [...]