Shannon Hayes

Harvest season has begun here in Schoharie County. Farm Stands along the valley floor are piled high with bushel baskets of potatoes, cucumbers, sweet peppers, summer squash, sweet corn and tomatoes. My compulsion as I stand before them is to buy up all of them; to enter into a mad frenzy of food preservation, making sure that it is all put by as soon as possible. Technically, the season is supposed to stretch out for the next several weeks. There should be plenty of time to preserve the harvest; to let the days grow cooler, making the long, sticky, hot kitchen work more bearable.

But it was this week last year when the harvest season came to an abrupt finish as two tropical storms swept their way through this county, drowning us in a 500-year and then a 100-year flood all in the course of two weeks. (more…)

I wouldn’t say I’m a slob. The toilets get scrubbed, I’m a champion when it comes to de-cluttering, and the sheets get changed. But I do possess a certain, ummm…grime blindness. Since most cobwebs are above my sightline, I don’t notice them. The windows were last washed in 2008. Dusting really only occurs on those surfaces that see the most activity. I consider a healthy dirt population vital stimulation for my family’s immune system.

It’s not quite the same for Bob. Maybe it’s because he is significantly taller, so he sees more of the dust and cobwebs from up there. Maybe (most likely) it has something to do with his waspy New England roots.

And while the vacuum cleaner is one of his personal power tools and he wields it with truly sexy masculine form, he generously lets the rest slide with only occasional gurgles of frustration….until company is on the horizon. (more…)

Just a few weeks remain before the release of my newest cookbook, Long Way on a Little, which focuses on helping home cooks stretch their meat dollars as far as possible. Perhaps it is a reflection of these hard economic times that the advance sales of this new release are higher than any book I’ve ever written. We are all facing the need to stretch our dollars as far as possible, and folks who are committed to supporting a local, sustainable and just food system are no exception. That doesn’t mean we all need to stop eating steak dinners and subsist on a diet of pig knuckles and chicken feet (which wouldn't be so bad...). A good grassfed steak dinner can actually be had for a pretty decent price.

If you are on a budget and you long for some tasty steak, look past the filet mignon and porterhouses (don’t worry, as your grass farm representative, I can assure you that we will always find someone who will buy those cuts!). Search about in the display case until you can find yourself a nice sirloin tip steak. A boneless cut with lots of lean muscle and very little waste, a sirloin tip steak will feed a lot of dinner companions for a great price. And they’ll be so tender, your dinner guests are likely to think you splurged on some top-of-the-line sirloin. A sirloin tip steak doesn’t ordinarily enjoy a good reputation in the tenderness department, but a locally-grown grassfed beef processed using old-fashioned dry-age methods will yield different results. Read on to learn why. (more…)

For a family with two stay-at-home parents, our household can seem rather structured. When homeschool is in session, I wake at 4am to go to work, Bob wakes around 7:30, and we meet at 8am to review my writing and have coffee. At 8:30 am I leave for a walk, at 9:30 lessons begin. Lunch is served around 1:30 pm, afternoons are free for rest, sewing, errands, or making candles, soaps and salves to sell; evening walks are followed by early supper, and bedtime ablutions are underway before 7pm to allow for ample story time. My lights are generally out by 8:30 (the girls are allowed some discretion in their own lights-out decision, as long as they stay in bed), and Bob goes to work weaving baskets, printing labels and packaging our products, doing the bookkeeping, and editing my work. There is always something to do, and a rhythm for getting it done, but it comes from inside us, driven by our own sense of balance for rest, play and work. (more…)