Tag: skills

Is Radical Homemaking the New Feminism?

  • Author Shannon Hayes says raising chickens and growing veggies is a new route for women who consider themselves feminists. (Photo courtesy of Nathan & Jenny CC-2.0)

Women who consider themselves feminists might be shocked to hear what some are calling the new wave of feminism: women heading back to the kitchen – and the garden. Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Women who consider themselves feminists might be shocked to hear what some are calling the new wave of feminism: women heading back to the kitchen – and the garden. Julie Grant reports:

When Shannon Hayes was finishing her PhD, she made a list of all the female professors she’d ever had. There wasn’t one who had tenure who was also married with children. Hayes wanted a husband and family, and realized that if she wanted a big university job…

“I was not going to have these things. And they were as important to me as having a career. In fact, in truth they were more important to me.”

So, much to the dismay of her PhD committee members, she headed back to the northern foothills of the Appalachian mountains near the family farm where she grew up. She bought a teeny house with her husband. People whispered. What had gone wrong?

Once there, Hayes couldn’t even get a job interview. To make things worse, her husband lost his job two weeks after buying the house. So, they fell back on their domestic skills.

“Well, if something broke, we fixed it. If something ripped, we mended it. I was very good at canning, so any food we didn’t grow on the farm or didn’t grow in our gardens I wold go to the local farmers when it was in peak season and I would can it, freeze it, lacto-ferment it.”

Hayes says her idea of success changed. Spending time with her parents and children, cooking family meals – those are her successes.

And she’s found that more people are realizing the power of homemaking.

Hayes has now written a book called Radical Homemakers – which profiles twenty families that are saying “no” to regular jobs, and are instead raising chickens and growing veggies.

Hayes says homemaking is a new route for women who consider themselves feminists.

“I think that a lot of feminists are realizing that the family home life is extremely important. I do think that this is part of the next wave of feminism.”

One feminist blogger asked with disgust:
Are you telling women to get back in the kitchen?

Traditional feminists don’t like the sound of this one bit.

Brittany Shoot is another feminist blogger. She’s concerned with calling homemaking feminism. Shoot writes about eco-feminist issues for Bitch Media and The Women’s International Perspective. She says just because some women are doing it, does NOT make it feminism. She says Hayes’ message could be considered a step backward for women.

“I can’t imagine saying to my grandmother, ‘I’m going to stay home and just hang out.'”

Shoot says her grandmother struggled to attend university, and didn’t have nearly the choices Brittany has for a career. She would want Brittany to make the most of her opportunities.

“We’ve come so far. Why would you make this decision when you have the ability to have a career that may not only be lucrative, but fulfilling.”

But Shannon Hayes says we’ve been conditioned to want the money and status of a big job and that’s proving to be as empty for many women as it is for many men.

Hayes says being a housewife in the ‘50s and 60s was limiting. Back then, when Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, women were depressed by their role as homemakers. Women were losing their own identities to serve their husbands and children. But Hayes says women today are losing their identities to the workplace. She also says corporations have largely taken over in the home.
She says when women left the kitchen to join the workforce, that’s when everyone started eating processed, unhealthy foods.

“I think everybody should get back in the kitchen, not just women. But that’s because I don’t think you should be buying processed foods, and I don’t think you should be supporting industrial agriculture, and don’t think that you should be supporting food traveling thousands of miles.”

Hayes says becoming a homemaker isn’t abandoning feminism, it’s redefining it on her own terms. She’s sharing homemaking with her husband… and both are finding more balance between home life and work.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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Stone Ground Goodness

  • Using hand picks from North Carolina, Operations Manager Bill Schaubs starts his first solo millstone dressing project. He was taught by Upper Canada Village's Roland Tetrault. The deep furrows help the grain travel across the cutting plateaus--until done to the right consistency as judged by the miller. (Photo by Lucy Martin)

Today, we buy whatever we need from the
store. But what would happen if we had to make
our own butter or spin our own wool? We needed
these kinds of skills to survive. And many of
them took centuries to learn. Some people are
working to keep these skills alive. Lucy Martin
followed a man who works in a historic flour mill.
He’s taken the time to learn old skills that he
says still matter today:

Transcript

Today, we buy whatever we need from the
store. But what would happen if we had to make
our own butter or spin our own wool? We needed
these kinds of skills to survive. And many of
them took centuries to learn. Some people are
working to keep these skills alive. Lucy Martin
followed a man who works in a historic flour mill.
He’s taken the time to learn old skills that he
says still matter today:

(Sound of rushing water)

Bill Schaubs volunteers his time at Watson’s Mill in Ottawa, Ontario.

The old mill is powered by water. The water turns two huge millstones that cut grain into
flour. A few years ago, Schaubs learned how to maintain the millstones. He’s about to put
those lessons to the test – on one-ton wheels that are nearly 5 feet in diameter:

(sound of the Mill)

Lucy Martin: “Well, here are your beauties!”

Bill Schaubs: “They are. Absolutely! 1860’s beauties, if you will.”

Martin: “These date all the way back to then?”

Schaubs: “Yes, ma’am. They do.”

Millstones have something in common with car tires – their “tread” eventually wears down.
These wheels need to be dressed. Someone has to grind off encrusted flour
and re-chip the many grooves and surfaces, using hammer-sized picks.

It’s not a trade you
find in the yellow pages.

(sound of Shaubs chipping the wheels)

Bill Schaubs grew up on a farm. He still keeps some of his family’s land in production. But he
spent a lot of his career helping to build things for NASA. He thinks it’s important to know
many skills, old or new.

“Yes, keep the technology! It’s great; I love it too, OK? But we need to still keep our feet on
the ground and be realistic about everything.”

Schaubs says one reason to keep these traditional mills running is because of the kind of
bread you can make from them. These days, flour is typically milled in modern factories,
using high-speed metal rollers. A place like Watson’s Mill can’t possibly match those for
volume, or price.

But stone-ground flour is a specialty product. It isn’t always found at your nearby supermarket.
The high-fiber whole grain is cut, not crushed, by the stone’s sharp grooves. The process
preserves wheat’s natural oils and nutrients.

Larry Ellis is a big fan of bread made from this flour.

“I get at least one loaf, every week. It looks like it came out of your mother’s oven, sort of
thing, you know? (chuckles)”

Besides promoting things like flavor and nutrition, Bill Schaubs says there’s also a sort of
insurance factor.

“This grist mill here, is completely water-powered. So, if all else fails, we can always mill
flour.”

(sound of park visitors boarding a boat, speaking in French)

To keep the millstones in good shape, Schaubs had to learn from the experts. He came here,
to Upper Canada Village, an 1860’s era Heritage Park with its own grist mill.

Liam Carson works at the park. He says maintaining many different skills is important
because society doesn’t always know when they might be needed.

“If you can find a way of doing things that’s better, it doesn’t matter if it’s high tech or low tech,
it doesn’t matter if it’s now or then – better is better. And the more of these parallel paths you
have, that still exist, that’s a wealth of possibilities that can be accessed.”

(sound of the mill)

Back inside Watson’s Mill, the freshly-dressed millstones are ready to go. This is the test run.

(sound of wheat falling into millstones)

Bill Schaubs watches the gold-brown wheat trickle down while checking on the flour as it
comes out.

“There’s still a little bit of tweaking to do, but other than that, I’m happy! Good learning
experience, that’s for sure!”

Sometimes Schaubs worries that too many skills are getting lost. He’d like to see more
people taking the time to pick them up and pass them on. Old or new, he thinks we need
them all.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lucy Martin.

Related Links

Cold War Toxin in Drinking Water?

A toxic leftover from the Cold War is polluting soil and water at sites across the country. More than two dozen sites in the Great Lakes region could be contaminated by a chemical used in rocket fuel. The chemical was either used or stored at the sites. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports: