Thankfully, the girls were both visiting friends and family for the weekend, leaving us alone to deal with the mess. In a last ditch effort prior to his departure, he went out and bought a gallon of some sort of liquid fire, dumped it down the drain, and hoped for the best.

Things only got worse. The sink backed up like never before, and filled itself with the toxic poison. Bob stared at me, wide-eyed. “I’m SO sorry! I don’t want to leave you with this!” We cooked on the grill and carried our dishes back and forth to the remaining working sinks in the house, and agreed it was time to call the plumber. The next day, Sunday, he left.

Soon after, my mom and dad dropped by, bringing Ula home from her sleepover. They took one look at the state of my kitchen, the contents of the sink cabinets spread around the floor, the dishes scattered around the house and my wild eyes, then loaded her back in the car, and informed me she was sleeping over at the farm until the problem was resolved. They arranged for Saoirse to be dropped off there as well.

And then I was alone. I felt the house sigh around me as we settled in together. Certainly there was a lot of work to be done, but suddenly the pace was my own. My labors didn’t need to be squeezed in between meal times, cuddle times, referee calls for sister battles, potty assistance, story-reading, tooth brushing. There was just me, my dog and cat, and 60 willows to plant and mulch, 32 candles to be made, a few hundred pounds of sausage to make down at the farm, one kitchen with a surfeit of dishes, and dumped-out cabinets, and a backed-up sink filled with liquid fire. Sure it was a formidable amount of work. But now I would be able to tackle it in the luxurious state of uninterrupted peace.

I didn’t get on the phone right away with a plumber who responded to emergency calls. Truth be told, I didn’t want to come up with the funds that an emergency call would require. And as I was now able to have some peace and quiet to think, I concluded that there really was no reason I couldn’t fix that sink myself. And make the 32 candles, plant the 60 willows, clean up the kitchen, then head to the farm the next morning to make the sausage.

In 48 hours of being on my own, I admittedly got a lot done. But I sat down for a total of 7 minutes. My body was in a state of exhaustion. I knew I needed to rest, but each time I found my way to my rocking chair, I would leap up, remembering a load of laundry that needed to be hung out, or noticing a light that hadn’t been switched off, or thinking of some new trick that I could try with the sink . I didn’t read, knit, or even make myself a cup of coffee or tea. I burned through two work shirts and one pair of Carhart pants with liquid fire, acquired several burns up and down my arms, and the only time I talked was to answer my mother’s phone calls with “no, it’s not fixed yet.”

I finally did surrender and call the plumber. I left in the middle of sausage making and drove home to meet him. I fixed my lunch while he was there, and as he worked, we chatted away about myriad things – the differences between his city clients and country clients; how his younger brother, who was accompanying him on the job, had just dropped out of high school to learn the family trade; how he’d always wanted to be a writer. He showed me how to fix the sink and flush the pipes with boiling water. And I wrote him a check for two hundred dollars before sending him on his way. After wincing at the price, I realized that, because he’d shown up, I had finally sat down and rested.

Our house is restored now. Bob is home, the sink works, and I am back to squeezing my work into the spaces between morning coffee with Bob, homeschool lessons and eye therapy, regularly scheduled meal times and refereeing sibling rivalries – all those pesky impediments to my productivity that let me rest, relax, and enjoy my life.

Visit Shannon’s blog and hear the latest about her farming life.

Shannon Hayes is the author of Radical Homemakers.

When Bob and I chose our life paths, we had no intentions of donning monastic hair shirts. Just because we choose to be radical homemakers doesn’t mean we choose to forgo all other non-home-oriented dreams. It is true that our incomes and environmental concerns don’t allow for us to take annual international holidays. But while it may inspire finger-wagging for ecological transgression, our family chooses to travel. Here’s how we do it:

Make it special

Trips like these only happen every few years. That gives us time to plan and save up, and allows us the continuity in our own home that is so important for sustaining our livelihood. It would be hard to carry on with our domestic production-oriented lives if we were traveling for two months out of every year, but it is certainly manageable to work it into the schedule every few years.

Count on family and good relationships.

Of all the things I’m proud of in my life, I count my relationship with my family at the very top of the list. They’re wonderful people, and each of the generations works to support each other. My parents want to see us enjoy our lives. They want their grandchildren to have terrific adventures. In our case, that means the family farm and businesses continue, even when a few folks are absent for a spell. We’ve learned that when we give each other the ability to break free for a while, it keeps our agrarian life vibrant and fresh.

Homemaking skills are portable.

In two months of travel, we’ll have a maximum of three nights in hotels. The rest of the time is in rented apartments and houses where we continue many of the radical homemaking practices that define our life in the United States. French restaurants and cafes are great fun, but we don’t need to be in them every day to have a wonderful trip. We eat out once per week, but take the rest of our meals around a kitchen table, or as picnics. I plan for leftovers, minimize the girls’ access to sweets (they tend to make the kids hungrier later on); and I save carrot stubs, onion skins, lettuce heels, and bones to boil into broth, which we drink for breakfast or make into soup.

Make more pleasure than you consume.

Castles and museums are terrific…. to a point. They’re also pretty pricey, and don’t always offer insights into culture. We are certainly hitting some tourist attractions, but there are plenty of beautiful churches and castle ruins where walking inside is free. Much of our vacation is spent “at home” in the communities we choose to visit. We get to know local folks and learn history from the stories they share. Our play and relaxation entails taking walks; exploring foreign libraries, schools, and farmers’ markets; having play dates with new friends; reading to each other; cooking different foods; making crafts from found exotic objects; brewing a cup of tea and sitting quietly in the sunshine with some knitting or a novel set in the place we’re visiting. We’ve found this is far more pleasurable than burying our noses in travel guides or making sure the kids don’t touch some forbidden object in a museum. My daughters Saoirse and Ula flourish in the relaxed pace, and find endless fascinations exploring the new world and neighbors around them, and we aren’t confronted with daily battles trying to get them up and out the door at the first light, yelling at them for fighting in the car while we try to read a map, or herding them out of souvenir shops. (All of that does go on now and then, but not on a daily basis.) And finally….

Make it a goal.

I do not think that every family who chooses a radical homemaking path needs to figure out how to afford international travel. But it was something Bob and I wanted to be able to do. When we embarked on this path, we wrote very clear goals about what we wanted from this life. The freedom to travel with our kids, to make travel part of their homeschooling, was something we strongly desired. And since that is a goal we’ve articulated, we find we have a tendency to make it happen. We are willing to take on odd jobs here and there to get the money we need. We are willing to work extra hard before we go, so that we can have the time away. We reduce the number of trips we take, but extend the amount of time away to reduce our ecological impact. We make room for it in our lives. It is a choice we have made.

And in exchange, it alters our lives profoundly. We learn about different ways of living, see the world through a different set of eyes, explore how history has impacted our present world, open ourselves up to new and sometimes intimidating experiences. It allows us time to gather close as a family unit, to learn to count on each other. It inspires us to make changes, experiment with new ideas in our own lives, and experience personal growth. And at the end, we have the great fortune of coming back to a life we love, a life that allows us endless adventures, both home and abroad.

Thus, it’s rather amusing when people come to the farm and say things like “I’ve got s-h-i-t on my shoes” (I do believe most 8-year-olds, and even a lot of 4-year-olds, can decipher s-h-i-t).  If they have linguistic slips around my children, most people are quickly apologetic, and often turn crimson with embarrassment.

Yet very few people think twice about walking into the kitchen, pulling up a chair, and saying things like “this world is going to h-e-double-hockey-sticks. If the earth’s temperature rises just a few more degrees, that’ll be the end of the human race!”

I want my children to connect to their natural world, to have a childhood that fills them up with earthly joys. I can think of no better way to fuel a fire in adulthood to heal our planet.
Okay, call me weird. I really don’t care if you say “hell” in front of my children. But it seriously irks me that grown-ups don’t consider the trauma they’re inflicting on worried young minds by telling them that their lives—and all the beautiful nature that feeds their souls—are in inevitable peril.

This is not to say that I am in denial about climate change. Bob and I think about this constantly.  But I do not believe it is helpful to burden children with frightening facts about the state of the planet when they are powerless, at their young age, to act upon it. I can’t think of a more effective way to make them disengage from the world around them—to cut themselves off from nature, to choose apathy as an act of self-defense—for fear of becoming too attached to something that will be ripped away.

I want my children to connect to their natural world, to have a childhood that fills them up with earthly joys. I can think of no better way to fuel a fire in adulthood to heal our planet. But I don’t think little kids should have to hear about these serious and frightening issues, especially depicted with the dramatic flair that grown-ups find necessary for climate change discussions.

We emphasize that there is a better world that can come of all this, that we can adapt. If we want to see change, then we can’t frighten and discourage the young minds who will be responsible for seeing it through.
I still believe children should be raised with an awareness of their impact on the earth. But rather than frightening them, I prefer to empower my daughters. We teach them to pick up litter, use up leftovers, to compost. We walk in our fields with our livestock and talk about the importance of the spongy soil beneath our feet and the power of the blades of grass between our toes. We limit the number of trips in our car, we sew buttons back on their dresses, we repeat the words of Thoreau (“my greatest skill is to want but little),” and we perpetually strive to cultivate that as our ultimate achievement.

On Facing Judgment
Live radically, and you’ll inevitably face the judgment of others. For Shannon Hayes, loving unconditionally is the antidote.
I cannot cover their ears whenever a well-meaning (and justifiably angry) adult rages about the consequences of our unsatisfactory response to climate crisis. I wince and endure it. When the girls ask questions later on, Bob and I don’t deny the problem. But we do try to direct their attention instead to what we are doing about it: “That’s why we grow food for our community.  That’s why we don’t buy all those plastic toys. That’s why we try not to drive so much. That’s why Mommy and Daddy are writing, speaking, and protesting.” We emphasize that there is a better world that can come of all this, that we can adapt. If we want to see change, then we can’t frighten and discourage the young minds who will be responsible for seeing it through.

Love is a far more powerful motivator than fear. While we cannot bleep out my friends’ and neighbors’ fear-inducing remarks about the climate, Bob and I can encourage Saoirse and Ula to love their planet, let them know that they have the power to change it, and most importantly, be part of the change ourselves….even if that means putting up with a little extra s-h-i-t.

Shannon Hayes is the author of Radical Homemakers.

You don’t have to spend much time with me to know my type. My camera doesn’t make phone calls or play music. Emails aren’t checked more than once or twice per day. If you want to talk in person, you’ll need to call me on a land line, which only rings in my office, and not in my house. You get the idea…I’m sort of a New Age Luddite.

I’m not against all forms of technology, however. I’m all for anything that can lighten my footprint on the earth, ease my workload, reduce my expenses, and enable me to help create more social justice and feed into a counter cultural revolution. Bob tried numerous times to convince me that an e-reader would meet these criteria.

I wouldn’t believe him. I couldn’t fathom how another electronic device created from petroleum and unknown materials that will break and wind up in a recycling heap could possibly be more eco-friendly than a trusty book. Then a couple things happened.

- Bob resigned as my library book eraser. The most sustainable way to support my reading and research habit is through our public library service. I made heavy use of interlibrary loans for the books I needed, underlined passages with pencil, and lightly jotted my notes in the margins. After reading the books, I’d type up all relevant passages and margin notes, then hand the book to Bob, along with a special eraser, to thoroughly clean before returning it. Yes, he stayed married to me. But he finally put his foot down and went back to washing my dirty dishes instead. I had Saoirse willing to do it for a while, but then she got bored. Ula was my next choice, but she kept eating erasers. That left me to deal with it, and I found myself spending entire work days erasing library books.

- Our bookshelves were filling up. The cost of an e-reader was going to be less than the cost of some lumber to build more storage room.

- I discovered there were e-readers that not only allowed me to highlight passages, but came with QWERTY keyboards that let me quickly type up my margin notes, then download everything to my computer.

- And then the NY Public library AND my local library started making ebooks available. I bought an e-reader. I traveled to NYC to get a NY Public Library card so I could access their electronic book collection in addition to the local one. Suddenly, for less than $200 (plus the cost of a train ticket to the city), I had exponentially increased my access to books. The e-reader has been in my possession for only 6 months and has paid for itself twice.

But does it meet the test for stimulating social justice and counter-cultural revolutions? Locally owned bookstores are getting cut out of the loop. As a reader, I depend on their critical eye to select and suggest titles that might suit my needs. They provide a valuable service to our communities, and we must find a way to support them.

However, what most people easily overlook is that authors have been cut out of the loop since the invention of the publishing industry. It is a standard assumption that only the best (read as “best marketed”) authors deserve sufficient compensation for their labors. Niche and obscure writers are supposed to be thankful if a publisher even recognizes our hard work with a few pennies. As an example, I was just offered a deal from a major publisher for a book that would require 1 year to produce that would pay me an advance of $4750, from which all my research expenses would need to be deducted. A typical author doesn’t even make minimum wage.

Yes, I’d like to see the independent bookstore stay in business. But authors need to earn a living, too, especially if we’re going to provoke counter-cultural revolutions. And e-books are blowing the world wide open for any author who chooses to sidestep the conventional publishing industry and strike out on their own. With e-books, an author can write and eat. Through e-book publishing, independent authors don’t need to lay out the capital to cover printing and distribution costs. Websites like Smashwords.com are coming on line to help them market their work independently. Self-published authors can upload directly to the major bookseller sites, too. Out-of-print authors can reclaim rights and restore their titles to the cultural canon. Because of e-books, a self-published author can support him or herself. And then they can support independent local cafes, food co-ops, farmers, musicians, non-profit revolutionary causes, craftspeople, and bookstores.

Since joining the e-reader club, my eyes have been opened by the opportunity to support and enjoy the work of fellow self-published writers. I’m able to review and critique manuscripts easily, access inexpensive books that pay a fair wage to the writer, and avoid filling my house with endless volumes of bound, dust-collecting paper.

I’ve come to observe other advantages, too. When many of the homes in my county were flooded following two tropical storms this past fall, the amount of ruined books hauled away to the dump piles was distressing. An e-reader could have restored literary collections with the touch of a button. While on the road, I am able to take books out of my local library, even if I’m seven hours from home. But best of all, my dog likes it, because I can finally read and turn pages with one hand while continuously petting her with the other.

It is not yet a perfect technology. My understanding is that a person must be an avid book lover to offset the ecological impact of an e-reader (I’ve seen estimates of 20-40 books per year being the required e-consumption rate to be more sustainable than paper). The problem of saving the independent bookstore is not resolved, either. I still rely on them for art, craft and cooking books that need to be viewed in larger size, for reference books, children’s books, and out-of-print titles. And I want them to continue to offer the other titles, because I rely on their suggestions and knowledge of the industry, and want to be able to browse titles by flipping through them. I hope they will find a way to stay in business. Perhaps it will only be a matter of time before those crazy cameras that make phone calls will assist in the book buying process, allowing browsers to shoot images of UPC codes in the book store, instantly purchasing titles on display for their e-readers. By golly, there may be a use for that bizarre technology yet.

Reposted from Shannon’s blog, where you can chime in on the conversation. What do you think about e-readers?

Shannon Hayes is the author of Radical Homemakers.

Some farmers, myself included, heeded the call and joined the march. Many who couldn’t make it to the city on short notice wrote to express their support. But a handful of caustic, angry responses showed up in my inbox as well:

“I hate to tell you, but you are part of the 1%…You may not be a millionaire banker, but you do own a business….Folks at OWS believe you should provide for their needs, and that they need to do nothing in return.”

“You just lost me as a subscriber.”

“OWS objectives are to destroy our free-choice political system and our free-market economy and replace them with anarcho-socialism. [If they succeed,] your first task of a morning will be to fire up the computer for the latest email from the Agricultural Czar, telling you what to plant in which field, and when.”

“OWS methods are as ugly as the future they envision, including defecating on the American flag and urinating on police cars.”

“What is wrong with you?….These “occupiers” are the ones that want something handed to them for doing nothing.”

“Occupy Wall Street is EVIL!”

“I wish you had stayed apolitical.”

Maybe I should have deleted the emails and moved on. I get plenty of nasty letters from anonymous folks who don’t like the fact that I eat meat, or that I’ve advocated homemaking as an ecologically and politically powerful vocation. Those letters go into a folder called “Alternative Fan Mail,” where they pretty much get forgotten. I could just do that with these. Or I could write and tell the senders they were being misled by corporations with a vested interest in convincing them that occupiers were bad people, out to ruin their way of life. I could explain they were being manipulated to get their continued compliance with the existing power structure. Chances are, they would tell me I was the one being misled. Our exchanges would zero each other out.

My stomach churned in angst over these notes. It was like getting hate mail from family, from people I deeply respect—people who believed in me and my work long before anyone else did. I started my writing career publishing recipes for grassfed meat. As a proponent of sustainable agriculture and grass-based ranching, and as a family farmer trying to get the American public to think outside the grocery store, it was the most important place for me to begin. If I wanted Americans to change the way they eat, then they needed recipes.

But for a long time, it was hard to get my work out. Glossy magazines didn’t want to talk to me; big house publishers said my topic wasn’t important. Tips for success were dropped in my lap along the way: “Hire a publicist.” “Go make friends with Rachel Ray.” “Pray that Martha Stewart will discover you, and then you’ll have it made.” “Accentuate your cleavage.” Not very practical tips. About two years after publishing my first cookbook, a well-meaning publishing professional from New York dropped by my farmers’ market booth to pick up a pack of sausages. Seeing my first cookbook on display, he chatted to me about my writing efforts. Before he left he leaned over and whispered his final prognosis for my career: “You’ll never make it. You don’t do lunch in the city.”

No. I didn’t do lunch. We were too busy growing lunch.

I decided that, if no one wanted to pay me to do my work, then I would give it away for free to the folks who valued it: other farmers. I began GrassfedCooking.com, a website devoted to helping pasture-based farmers communicate with their customers. I sent out the e-newsletter, providing recipes or tips for working more effectively with grassfed meats, or else opinion pieces that covered developments that impacted small farmers. The site slowly developed a faithful following of salt-of-the-earth farmers, food activists, and meat lovers. It became a kind of community.

Then I asked them to join a protest, and stepped in a hornet’s nest.

How to respond? To dismiss the opposing views would mean dismissing our relationship. That doesn’t help the Occupy movement, and it doesn’t help the grassfed farming movement. In the end, I did my best to have a dialogue, to point out our common interests, to respectfully explain that I was moving forward with my choice to march on Sunday. Not all farmers think of our work as political, but I do; it’s hard not to notice the role that corporate power plays in distorting our food system, from prices to farming practices.

I know I lost a few readers. But I think I managed to convince a few of them that, while they may not agree with all of the folks who have chosen to occupy Wall Street, there were at least a few people down in New York on Sunday who didn’t fit the profile that the news had told them to expect.

In truth, nobody fit the profile. My experience at the Sunday rally was one of the most moving four hours of my life, surrounded by hundreds of people who cared about the same issues I do: food sovereignty, the need for city people to start building soil and growing their own food, the need for rural and urban folks to build better relationships with each other to sidestep the corporate food system. I met dairy farmers, meat producers, seed producers, vegetable growers….even some friendly vegetarians. I met food activists, senior citizens concerned about the quality of food for their grandchildren, community gardeners, college students who were trying to learn how to feed themselves ethically and healthfully. We saw American flags, held up high. One of them led our march. And I saw a side of New York City that I’d never seen before. New Yorkers hung out their apartment windows, came to sit on their steps, sat out at cafes and stood in front of their small grocery stores and food stands. They cheered and clapped as we marched by. They sang and chanted with us. We marched through community gardens reclaimed from abandoned lots. I stepped on ground that was as lush and beautiful as any earth I tread upon here upstate.

The most poignant moment for me, however, was when our march passed through a community garden and I heard cheers from up above me. I looked up and saw four urban teenagers standing in a tree house. They waved and smiled, then held up a giant sign for us to read: This land will live again.

This land will live again. It will live in America’s countryside, in her mountains and rivers, as well as in her cities. To me, that’s what the Occupy movement is all about—finding ways for all living things to thrive. And for those of us in the grassfed farming community, that’s what we’re all about too, even if we don’t all agree with protests.

Shannon Hayes is the author of Radical Homemakers.

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 zone, but we figured we’d lose power, so we ground extra coffee, filled the bathtub and several jars with water, and made sure the yard was free of debris in the event of high winds. At the farm, the chickens and turkeys were brought in off pasture. We scattered wood shavings on the barn floor, tied up panels for temporary pens, then secured tarps along the open front to protect them from the rain. Dad and Mom herded the sheep a mile up Heathen Creek road to the other farm we rent, which is on higher ground. We assumed we were over-prepared.

We weren’t. We are too cut-off from the world right now to know what, exactly, came through Schoharie County on Sunday. Maybe it was just the fringe of the storm. Maybe Irene herself was checking out life in the Catskills. All I know was that at 9:30 Sunday morning, we lost power, as predicted. At 10 am, our phone rang with an automated message from our county’s emergency response system. Earlier storm predictions had been greatly underestimated for our area. If we were in an area prone to flooding, the message told us to evacuate immediately. As best as I can figure, only those of us high and safe on the mountain tops got the call. Most folks down below had already lost service. But even high up here, we heard the evacuation sirens.

Schoharie County residents make our lives in three different habitats: on the tops of the mountains, in the mountains, and down in the valleys. Bob and I live on top of a mountain. We played with our daughters and watched the rains with interest. My family’s farm, on the other hand, is in the mountains, flanked on two sides by ordinarily pristine, calm mountain streams. Mom and Dad sat in their house and watched them rage over the creek banks, come frighteningly close to the house, and cause the roads to boil and rip. They were so fast and furious, one lane of the road by of the farm completely fell away, leaving a ten foot drop to the raging water. Two days after the storm, portions of County Route 4 continue to fall away; it is no longer passable on the east side and the west side is not far behind. The bridge to Heathen Creek Road was completely washed away, separating us from our sheep.

We were the lucky ones. Last I heard, we still couldn’t get to the Middleburgh or Schoharie Valleys, where many of our friends (and most of the local vegetable farmers) had their homes. I presume everyone got out safely, but I don’t think they had anything more than the shirts on their backs. We don’t know where folks are at this point.

The best soil for vegetable crops is generally located along the flood plains. But flooding around here is usually a winter-thaw phenomenon. It isn’t supposed to happen in the height of the harvest season. Vegetable producers around here make most of their annual income from July through October. In addition to the incredible damage to their homes, they’ve also just lost half the year’s income, and an unfathomable amount of topsoil and accumulated fertility.

There is a peculiar tendency in the face of devastation to fixate on what we do have, what wasn’t lost. The demolished road at the end of our farm’s driveway has become a local tourist attraction and gathering spot. Folks stand around, staring at it and snapping pictures, then begin to recite a current inventory of their blessings to each other. It is easier to concentrate on that than to wrap our heads around the tragedy that will unfold as we learn more about the valleys below.

Life could certainly be worse. Heathen Creek neighbors on the far side of the bridge gathered together yesterday and worked with their hands to forge a dirt and rock passage across the water, just wide enough to allow a four-wheeler to traverse. One resident strapped a can of gas and a milk crate to his ATV and drove off seven miles to Cobleskill to re-stock his beer supply. Another neighbor came down to let us know it was safe to go up and bring the sheep home.

The moving of our flock was the first parade seen in West Fulton in many decades. Unsure what else to do in the face of so much wreckage, our neighbors came out to stand along the road and help herd the ewes back to the farm. Saoirse and Ula rode behind in the mule, waving to all the neighbors, self-appointed princesses of the parade…

Read the rest on Yes! Magazine’s website.

“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. It usually comes up in private conversations following lectures; it is whispered at book signings; it finds its way into my email inbox as would-be radical homemakers confess the single greatest obstacle to changing their home from a center of consumption to a center of production: the unsupportive partner.

I’ve held hands with strangers as they cried about their marriages, read long anonymously written letters of love and pain. My heart aches for these souls. I’ve repeatedly wanted to post a piece addressing this problem, but it has taken me two years of listening to these personal stories before I could find some universal themes in them that might be helpful for those folks who are facing similar situations.

The truth about radical homemaking is that single people can do it, and married people can do it. But if all the adults in a household aren’t on board with the efforts, it is damned near impossible. It is easy to vilify a partner who refuses to carry a water bottle, buys coffee every day in a disposable cup, discourages anyone from leaving a job they hate and still thinks Hummers are cool. But as anyone who has faced this problem in a marriage will tell you, it is not a black-and-white matter. These unions are typically made when love is true and ideals are high. The person who wants to start down the radical homemaking path cannot always write off an unsupportive partner as ‘a jerk,’ file a separation agreement and simply move on. The people we love are complex. There are reasons a partner may be derisive about this radical homemaking idea and still buy the mocha frappaccino with the domed plastic disposable lid—even if they  love the earth and care about social justice:

Despair. The most obvious difference between the would-be radical homemaker and the unsupportive partner that I’ve observed is that the would-be radical homemakers still have hope. They still believe that their daily choices will have an impact on the future of the world. There is enough optimism lingering in their souls that they believe changing how they live, even if it must be incremental, is still possible. They believe that, with time and perseverance, a new and better life can unfold. The unsupportive partner often wants a better world, too. But he or she has given up believing that it is possible. The act of keeping a garden, of mending one’s clothes, of any earth-saving effort, seems fruitless to a person who feels it may be too little too late. While the wish for a healed planet may be the same, the unsupportive partner may simply be taking comfort from a consumptive lifestyle because he or she can no longer take comfort from hope.

Fear. There are so many things we are taught to be afraid of in our culture: fear of not having a steady paycheck, fear of not having our children enrolled in the best schools, fear of not blending in with the neighborhood,  fear of existing without two or more cars in a household, fear of relying on family and friends for support. The radical homemaking path requires a person to confront those fears. The would-be radical homemaker has been able to do this, and has discovered that many, if not all of their fears, are little more than a hall of mirrors keeping them from a deeper, more pleasurable and empowering way of life. The unsupportive partner may still be clouded by the fears, so committed to them that they are unwilling to engage in a dialogue that might challenge them.

Lack of a Dream. Despair and fear alone are problematic attributes in an unsupportive partner, but everyone who considers a different life path confronts them. In order  to put up half a fight in dispelling them, a person must be able to imagine what a life could be like without them. What does a life look like where one is not afraid? Where one lives with optimism that our collective individual choices will add up to a new earth community? What would a happy life look like?

Fear and despair creep their way into everyone’s life. They overtake our daily decisions without our even noticing, smothering our imagination … unless we take the time to dream. Dreaming about what we truly want for our homes, for our families, for our land and communities, and for our time is the best antidote I know for fear and despair. Each time we reflect on what we most want in our lives, we are pushed to examine the barriers that are keeping us from our dreams. And each time we examine and express them, the barriers grow a tiny bit weaker, the dreams grow a tiny bit more clear.

We dream constantly in our family. And every few years, Bob and I write down whatever the current dream is. We write down all that we want for the land—the land that we steward, as well as the land that we impact with our life choices. We write down what we want our time to be used for, what we’d like our financial resources to be, and what we want our home to be like. The dream we write is a shared one. It contains what we both want—no compromises, no negotiations. It sits up on a wall in the room where we meet every morning to share a cup of coffee or tea. And every decision we make together, whether it  is a simple choice about what to get done that day, or a big decision about a financial investment, reflects the dreams that are posted on our wall. It reminds us that playing music together is as important as making sausages for the farmers’ market, or returning phone calls, or doing paperwork. It reminds us that keeping the car turned off as much as possible keeps us closer to our deeper dreams. When we make choices about our money, it reminds us of the world we want to create.

That is not to say that fear and despair don’t enter our lives.  But with our shared vision on our wall, we are constantly reminded to challenge them, and to see fear and despair for what they truly are: obstructions to our dreams. The dream holds fear and despair at bay for us. And it enables us to support each other, because we both know what we are moving toward.

Not every union is worth preserving. Sometimes couples must go their separate ways. But sometimes all the pieces for a happy life together are present, but need help coming out. If you are pining for the radical homemaker path and feel you have an unsupportive partner, before you abandon your relationship, consider if fear and despair are holding the other person hostage. They are very real for the person who is experiencing them, and it is important to honor their existence. But then, if you can, try dreaming together again, as you may have done once a long time ago. Your mutual dreams may not resolve the fear and despair, but I promise they will soften them. And better still, those dreams instill hope and inspire courage. And hope and courage inspire good change, even though it may be slow. The radical homemaker path may have more bends in the road for your family than for others, but the journey will still be interesting, beautiful, and powerful.

Shannon Hayes wrote this post for Yes! Magazine, where you can read it in its entirety.

Shannon Hayes is the author of Radical Homemakers.

Looking around our home, there are plenty of signs that we haven’t. Most of the blueberry bushes limped through the winter, but I lost two of them owing to my imperfect stewardship from prior years. One of Bob’s beehives died out because we divided the colony at the wrong time last year. This year’s mistakes are already forthcoming: Sitting cozy by the fire in February, we decided to plant a small orchard and mail ordered eleven trees. That’s a stupid thing to do. It is fine to decide to plant an orchard, but that decision means the next growing season should be devoted to preparing the soil for the following year, not to planting and watering baby trees. In our zeal, we skipped an all-important step, and now those poor trees must struggle to survive in soil that is nutrient-poor and nearly devoid of microbial life.

Continue reading this article at Yes! Magazine.

Shannon Hayes is the author of Radical Homemakers.

I called my dad two nights ago to ask if I could join him on his shift for Sunday morning. He agreed, warning me that in the last few days, Grandpa had stopped conversing. I asked if he minded if I brought the girls.

“I don’t know. Maybe we can talk about it later.” With that, the conversation ended.

That was his code for telling me that I had to make the decision.

I thought back over my own experiences with death as a child. My brother and I cared for pets who were making their passages; attempted to save baby birds who’d fallen out of their nests; carried hypothermic lambs into the kitchen on cold winter nights, and worked to resuscitate them until they died in our arms; removed dead chickens from the coop. Coping with death was an on-farm necessity. But much of our family still preferred to keep it a safe distance from life.

Continue reading this article at Yes! Magazine.

Shannon Hayes is the author of Radical Homemakers.

The more I write, the more I speak, the more I hear this question. It’s understandable. I paint my life as a dreamy blend of farming, cooking, home schooling, canning, lacto-fermenting, music-making, soap-making, crafting, writing, occasional travel for speaking engagements or research and, believe it or not, I even find time to knit. I’ve knit two sweaters already this winter (confession: one was about three times larger than it was supposed to be, so Bob pulled the whole thing out). On the surface, I might seem like a regular Martha Stewart (only with bare feet, messy hair, and no stock portfolio).

Thus, when I hear those six words, HOW DO YOU DO IT ALL, I must be ready with my reply.

I don’t. Radical Homemakers are not one-person wonders, single-handedly capable of heroic feats of self-reliance. Rather, we have some handy skills (cooking, knitting, gardening), and then some meta-skills that work the real magic: savvy functioning within a life-serving economy, an ability to self-teach and overcome fears, realistic expectations, an understanding of what gives us deep pleasure, and, most importantly, relationship skills. I don’t do it all. I am in an interdependent relationship with my family and my closest friends, and together, we get stuff done.

Often, however, that answer doesn’t satisfy the asker. If they are in front of me, they lean forward, grow more intense and say, “Sure. Okay. But what about you. How do you do it? How do you get through your day? How do you write, cook a meal, and homeschool your kids?”

I confess that Bob washes the dishes.

There must be more to it than that, I’m told.

Okay. Here’s another try. Think of knitting as my substitute for prescription sedatives and alcohol. But that answer, too, only partially satisfies.

No television? Well, yes, that’s a time-saver, but often something my audience has already tried.

And then I have to hit on my biggest admission. I’m on a low-electron diet. Ask me the headlines. Or even for a weather forecast. Save for maybe once or twice a month, I can’t answer you. I can’t tell you the names of any pop stars, I have no understanding of what Twitter is, I’ve never held a “hand-held device,” and I can’t find my Facebook page without using the search function.

My computer is turned off every morning, once my work day is complete, usually around 9am. At that point, I tune out the rest of the world and tune into my family, home, and farm. Very often the telephone gets turned off, too. So does the radio.

I shut out the wide world to tend to my immediate world.

I didn’t always live this way. It was a choice I eventually made about using my time. Voices talking on the radio generated mental interference when trying to interact with people in the room where I was standing. Worse than that, I observed that email correspondence throughout the day, habitual Googling, and a steady-stream of web-updates were having a negative impact on my soul. Fixating on the computer made me an intolerant mother to my kids, had me doing stupid things like boiling over my soup pots, and—even if I was reading great news on the screen—it left me crabby. Answering the telephone during the day had a similar effect. It distracted me from taking a walk, cooking, or having a warm drink with Bob; worse, it would break up the rhythm of homeschooling.

Until now, I’ve kept my media phobia under wraps. After all, how could I publicly condemn the Internet (especially in a blog post), when the Internet is what enables me to be a stay-at-home parent, self-publishing books from a room just off my kitchen? How could I poo-poo cyberspace when I depend on it to research my books, to search my library’s card catalog, to get directions for where I am going? How can I turn off my computer when e-mails and reader comments on my Facebook page or blog posts are often the encouragement I need to keep writing and researching? Worse still, what right do I have to engage in social criticism if I don’t even know the headlines?

I grapple with these questions a lot, which is why I’ve been loathe to admit how disconnected I truly am from the wide world. I survive my life by blocking out interference at critical times in the day. My hesitation in admitting this is because I feel guilty. My low-electron diet makes me question if I am a good citizen if I am this out of touch with the world around me. Then I heard a great fact on NPR (I’m not always tuned out): the average person consumes nearly three times as much information today as they did in 1960.

This helps me put my low-electron diet in perspective. I am not “tuning out the world.” I am, however, limiting my information consumption to a level that enables me to function effectively in my life. I’ve learned that I need to be selective about what I let in, and I limit it to those things that I feel that I can influence, or that directly tie in to my most deeply held values.

I am forever advocating that we find ways to reduce our consumption to reasonable levels, and maybe information consumption is just one more venue we might consider. Can our bodies and brains truly tolerate the levels of information consumption we are engaging in? If we are in a state of overload, does that prevent us from leading socially and ecologically responsible lives—taking away the time we might be spending with our children, creating simple pleasures that don’t harm the Earth, growing our own food, or otherwise nourishing ourselves, our communities, and our families? I am thankful for much of the media that is available, for the information that helps me to understand how my lifestyle impacts the rest of the planet. But I have personally discovered that my brain simply cannot process all of it and simultaneously allow me to live a life in harmony with my values. If I take too much in, I lose my ability to concentrate.

And that, I think, is the missing component to the ever-present question, HOW DO YOU DO IT ALL? I can, farm, cook, teach, learn, parent, write, knit and best of all, enjoy my life, because, for better or worse, my mind is free to focus on the matters that are closest to my heart.

Read the original article on Yes! Magazine’s website.

Shannon Hayes is the author of Radical Homemakers.