Shannon Hayes

Farmer and the Grill Workshop

Equal parts carnivorous feast, mad-cap grilling extravaganza , and down-and-dirty discussion on meat cuts and marketing, The Farmer and the Grill workshop is intended to help grass-fed producers hone their marketing skills by honing their culinary skills. During the three to four hour workshop, participants will review the most common cuts of beef, lamb and pork, and learn about ideal methods for cooking each one in the kitchen and out on the grill or barbecue. In addition to exploring techniques for selling hard-to-market cuts (such as items from the chuck or round), special emphasis will be put on learning which cuts of meat are interchangeable in recipes, enabling direct-marketers to suggest substitutions when meat stocks are limited. In the second part of the workshop, participants head out to the grills and smoker for cooking demonstrations, where they will focus on grass-fed grilling techniques for classic and unexpected meat cuts. Be sure to
come hungry, as there’ll be lots to sample, and you’ll be cooking your own meal at the end. Limit 20 people per workshop.
If you are interested in scheduling a workshop in your community, email Shannon directly at the link above, or on the right

Mother Nature has shown her hand. Our planet is on the verge of climatic catastrophe; the fossil fuel that drives our industrialized economies is running out; animal and plant species are facing extinction; social injustices are rampant. At long last, Americans have grown conversant in the fundamental steps necessary to solve our global crisis: stop driving our cars; consume less; increase our self-reliance; buy locally, eat locally, rebuild our local communities.

What we have been afraid to articulate, however, is that at its core, the great work we face requires sweeping out our hearths and lighting the home fires.

Radical Homemakers is a book that looks at men and women across the United States who have opted to focus their lives on home and hearth as a political and ecological act; who have chosen to center their lives around family and community not only for personal fulfillment, but as a way to bring about cultural change. It explores what domesticity can look like in an era that has benefited from feminism; where domination and oppression are cast aside, where the choice to stay home is no longer equated with mind-numbing drudgery, economic insecurity, or relentless servitude.

Radical Homemakers from across the country speak out about their personal empowerment to bring about true change, find genuine happiness, to cast aside the pressures of a consumer culture, and live in a world where money loses much of its power to relationships, independent thought, and creativity.


Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity From a Consumer Culture will be published by Left to Write Press and distributed by Chelsea Green. It is due out in the Spring of 2010. To receive notification of its release, please click the link below and leave your name, address and email.

Shannon Hayes, Ph.D. is the host of grassfedcooking.com, and the author of The Farmer and the Grill and The Grassfed Gourmet. She works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York.