Shannon Hayes Bio
Cherie
Davis, my web designer, tells me that I need to include a bio on this website.
I tried to argue that there was plenty of biographical information about me
on www.shannonhayes.info and www.sapbush.com, but she said I needed to write
yet more about myself. And it needed to be different than the stuff you’d
find on the other sites. Cherie is a very sagacious woman and possesses a certain
inner power that I am reluctant to challenge, so I’ll do my best to comply
(plus, she and her husband Frank are very good customers of Sap Bush Hollow
Farm, all the more reason to keep them happy).
I grew up in West Fulton, NY, the higher hills of Schoharie County, the northernmost
tip of the Appalachian Mountain chain. Despite the fact that farmers have subsisted
on the rocky hillsides of our community for centuries, most of the farmland
in West Fulton was disregarded as non-viable for much of the last half century,
sparing us from many of the treacheries of agricultural industrialization.
My family purchased our farm and moved our sheep flock to these hills in 1979,
and we’ve stayed here ever since. I received a BA in Literature and Creative
Writing from Binghamton University in 1995, and a Masters and Ph.D. in sustainable
agriculture and community development from Cornell University in 2001 (as an
interesting bit of trivia, I was rejected three times from Cornell’s
various graduate programs. It wasn’t until I called a particularly wise
and sympathetic member of the rural sociology department and convinced him
that the admissions committee had made a grave error that I was finally allowed
in).
After graduate school, my husband and I considered various career options around
the country, then ultimately decided we’d prefer to work with my parents
on Sap Bush Hollow Farm, where we now raise grassfed lamb, beef, pork and poultry.
In addition to working with my family, I write essays, articles and books,
mostly about food, farming and rural living. I feel passionately that the simplest
ways we can begin to foster radical global transformation, heal the environment,
solve worldwide resource problems and cure myriad social problems, is to choose
our food wisely – to acquire our nourishment sustainably, locally and
regionally; to pay farmers a fair price for their labors, to cook for our loved
ones, and to take time to celebrate life together by sharing meals around the
family table. It is in this spirit that I offer my books, and I hope you will
enjoy them.
note from web designer: Hey, I just told her she should tell
you about herself here on this site instead of making you click to all those
other places. And it is sort of nice, isn't it, the whole not having to click
to thousand of different places and forgetting where you were and then not
being able to find the books to buy. Well, that is it from me. I will now go
revel in my sagaciousness. And probably get the husband to cook me something
from The Grassfed Gourmet for dinner.
