Shannon Hayes

Shannon Hayes writes and farms with three generations of her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in West Fulton, NY, where she grew up. The family raises all-natural grassfed lamb, beef, pork, and poultry. She holds a BA in creative writing from Binghamton University, and a Masters and PhD in Sustainable Agriculture and Community Development from Cornell.

Shannon is the author of four books: The Grassfed Gourmet, The Farmer and the Grill, Radical Homemakers and Long Way on a Little: An Earth Lover's Companion for Enjoying Meat, Pinching Pennies and Living Deliciously. All are published by Left to Write Press, a company that Shannon and her husband Bob started as a way to enable them to live in Schoharie County without having to sell-out to corporate media.

Shannon's essays and articles have appeared in myriad regional and national publications, including The New York Times, The Boston Review, and Northeast Public Radio. Hayes' quirky lifestyle, her attempts to live a life of personal accountability and sustainability, and her current research and writings about homemaking as an ecological movement have landed her and her family on the pages of the New York Times, Brain Child Magazine, Lancaster Farming, Small Farm Quarterly, Hobby Farm Home Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, Grit, Yes! Magazine, Elle Magazine, the national newspapers of Germany, Turkey and Canada, Arab News and the Pakistan Observer.


Shannon currenly blogs for Yes! Magazine, and her books are available through most conventional channels, as well as directly from the author at ShannonHayes.info and GrassfedCooking.com.

Shannon's next book project is tentatively titled Radical Pleasure: Unleashing Faith, Hope, Healing and Resiliance in Hard Times. Provided she can knuckle down and get to work on it, it will be due out from Left to Write Press in 2015. Left to Write Press is distributed by Chelsea Green.