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Looking for your next great read on rural America, democracy, food systems and community resilience? Check out Barn Raiser Reads on Bookshop.org, a curated collection of books that reflect the conversations shaping rural communities today. 📚 Every purchase also helps support independent bookstores and Barn Raiser’s journalism! bookshop.org/shop/barnraisin…

Over the past decade, a right-wing attack on the Veterans Health Administration has jeopardized the continued availability of health care designed specifically to meet the needs of veterans. Today, efforts to privatize the VA now threaten the very existence of the nation’s largest health care system. barnraisingmedia.com/why-the…

With the help of a Kickstarter campaign, Rae Garringer set out on a cross-country road trip to document and preserve the stories of rural lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and Two Spirit people across the United States. (From September 2024) buff.ly/7EKW8DC

New: Randy Villegas is headed to November after defeating a Democratic establishment-backed rival in California’s 22nd District, a race that highlighted growing tensions over party influence, campaign money and voter frustration. barnraisingmedia.com/2026-el…

Can a Family Resurrect the American Chestnut Tree in Appalachia? Virginia tree farmers reintroduce an iconic tree that was decimated by blight (From September 2025) barnraisingmedia.com/can-a-f…

"Habitat loss … habitat loss.” Hannah Maltry points to her paintings of birds displayed on her studio walls. She explains, one by one, why each species is today just holding onto existence. “With us chewing up the natural landscape, they’re all suffering,” she says. Maltry, a 34-year-old Columbus, Ohio, artist, is painting the portrait of every one of the 2,000-some bird species in North America. So far, she’s completed more than 200 for a project she estimates could take 10 years. She works in watercolor, including with handmade paints from small, woman-owned businesses, and uses metallic-infused embellishments to convey the birds’ movement and their feathers’ sheen. Her contemporary depictions reveal the energy, the personality and what Maltry calls the “vibe” of each bird. (From July 2025) barnraisingmedia.com/what-yo…

A new book examines how the progressive populists stood up to the Reagan administration in the name of economic equality and justice. barnraisingmedia.com/when-ru…

Are Americans Getting Sweet on Sorghum? With maple syrup production shrinking as the world warms farmers see this ancient grain an alternative barnraisingmedia.com/are-ame…

PFAS can also spread to farmland through pesticides laced with them—on average, 2.5 million tons of PFAS-containing pesticides are sprayed on crops in California alone. barnraisingmedia.com/usda-ca…

In November, President Trump signed an executive order calling to investigate meatpacking companies for possible price fixing and market manipulation. Yet his administration has been slashing budgets and staffing for offices meant to take action against consolidated power in the agriculture sector. barnraisingmedia.com/trump-p…

Opinion: Why are people drawn to the Christian Right? The answer may lie in deeper social crises that go beyond politics. barnraisingmedia.com/defusin…

Nitrate pollution is straining small water facilities in Iowa, even when they have advanced filtration systems barnraisingmedia.com/what-ha…

Wyoming, the first state where the Freedom Caucus gained control, shows what happens when “limited government” advocates direct public policy: barnraisingmedia.com/living-…

The Trump administration had slashed budgets and staffing for offices responsible for protecting farmers and consumers against consolidated power in the agriculture sector. barnraisingmedia.com/trump-p…

Jess Piper, 50, a straight-talking country woman, born and raised, is inspiring rural progressives throughout the nation. In 2022, tired of the same uncontested Republicans running in her district, she ran as a Democratic candidate for the Missouri legislature from Nodaway County in northwest Missouri. Although she lost the election, her struggle to raise money and support from the Democratic Party as a rural candidate spurred her to change that reality for other candidates—a mission she’s taken on with full force as the executive director of Blue Missouri. barnraisingmedia.com/2026-el…

Texas’ Radical Past Points to a Possible New Future: The People’s Party history shows how to build a working-class movement barnraisingmedia.com/texas-f…

Last week, after much delay, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) released its post-election autopsy of the 2024 cycle. As CNN noted, the report concludes that Harris lagged in rural areas nationally, that the gap proved insurmountable in the swing states, and that the campaign effectively wrote off rural America on the assumption that urban and suburban margins would make up the difference. barnraisingmedia.com/the-har…

What a thousand-year-old Indigenous prayer teaches us about reciprocity and healing from the destructive consumption of our society: barnraisingmedia.com/indigen…

Sign up to get Barn Raiser's 2026 Elections newsletter. Each Saturday over the next six months, we’ll help you make sense of it all by bringing you reporting on rural politics and elections you won’t find anywhere else—from reporting on data centers, the farm bill, the influence of corporate dark money and local solutions that have a national impact. No horse race here. Instead, you’ll find unsung local heroes, courageous candidates and everyday people fighting for a better life. You’ll find inspiration to organize in your community, information to fight voter paralysis and energy to feed your soul. Not every story has a happy ending, but it will have something you can take with you. barnraisingmedia.com/2026-mi…

In the 1970s, homesteading was the rage that took the counterculture rural. When she was an infant, Sarah Neidhardt’s family bought 20 acres in a remote section of the Arkansas Ozarks in Stone County, uprooting themselves from their home in Colorado Springs to forge a new life. Neidhardt’s family was at once unconventional and part of a trend: they joined what was then a growing back-to-the-land movement, a phenomenon that amalgamated 1960s counterculture with pioneer homesteading. Driven by a desire for independence and agrarian self-sufficiency, this also entailed a life of rural poverty and a critique of the superficial affluence and constraints of mainstream society. Twenty Acres: A Seventies Childhood in the Woods, released in 2023 by the University of Arkansas Press, is Neidhardt’s childhood memoir recounting this episode in her family’s life and their sudden return to a world they had left behind. At turns poetic and searing, Neidhardt wends through an array of sources (letters, artifacts, oral history and personal memory) to offer, in her words, “both a cautionary tale and an ode to an unconventional and pastoral life.” In the following, Neidhardt recounts her family’s encounter with the religious, political and racial dynamics of their new rural community in Stone County, and how they navigated the thin line that runs between isolation and community, solidarity and exclusion. barnraisingmedia.com/arkansa…