Writer Leslie Scrivener, in a Toronto Star feature last week, explores the “subtle and serene” ideology of preserving. An academic she interviews notes that the home canning renaissance she’s witnessed in Canada has been populated by people who are “not old-fashioned” (i.e., young). Scrivener theorizes: “Preserving…is a way of withholding, even in small measures, from the vast corporatization of our food.”

Shannon Hayes, a woman both old-fashioned and new, agrees. She comes from a longstanding farming family but, as a recent New York Times profile showed, is at the same time a “newly minted paradigm…now voguish.” In a brilliantly satiric self-flagellation that manages both the piquant and poignant, Hayes totally agrees. “I’ve gone so far to the left I’m meeting the right behind the barn for a smoke.”

But are those household tasks, so long reviled and now reclaimed, an unequivocal pleasure? Not quite. “We are the over-educated over-achievers,” writes Hayes, “sidestepping the conventional rat race in favor of an alternative maelstrom.” She speaks of archetypes, but being one doesn’t keep it from hurting her. Of her work at the farmer’s market, she writes:

We are selling you our lifestyle. “Buy from me,” it feels as though we’re saying, “Because I represent your values.” But what I really feel like saying is, “Buy from me, because I want to pick up a bottle of gin on the way home. Somehow, on our paths towards this noble life, one more group of girls has fallen prey to another impossible feminine ideal. And I, for one, am crumbling under the pressure of Über-Momming.

Bay Area writer Jennifer Jeffrey, too, feels the pressure. In The Feminist in My Kitchen, an essay she wrote this summer, she asks, “I wonder if our little blogosphere sits here debating the provenance of our nectarines while the larger community of women—most of whom have no time for surfing blogs, let along writing one—head out to work feeling more guilty than every before, as the mountain of expectations and unattainable standards grows ever higher.” She continues:

Can we call ourselves feminists…and still suggest that an ideal dinner consists of handmade ravioli and slow-simmered marinara from vine-ripened, hand-picked tomatoes and a salad composed of vegetables that (let’s be honest) are Not Available at Safeway?

It’s a good question indeed. Too much of a good thing…isn’t.