In Lowville, N.Y., Lessons on Sustainable Living LOWVILLE, N.Y. - "Has anyone here ever had canned beef?" Around the room, heads nodded, faces lighted up. Catherine Moore smiled. "Canned beef is wonderful," she said. It's just the best. But before she led the dozen or so hunters and cooks to the kitchen where pint jars were waiting, Ms. Moore, a dietitian, had some warnings: do not use mayonnaise jars; leave an inch for expansion; do not cheat on processing time. She flashed slides to drive home her point: a mathematical equation of multiplying botulism cells; an Oregon family who lost 12 people to botulism around 1924. "They think it was the green beans," Ms. Moore said. Ms. Moore's preservation class was one of dozens offered over the weekend at the Cornell University Cooperative Extension of Lewis County's first Homesteading Fair, an event that drew 700 people to this small rural village about an hour north of Utica. The fair is among hundreds of similar events across the country this month, including goat-keeping classes in Cherry Log, Ga., and cheese-making workshops in Santa Rosa, Calif., celebrating International Homesteading Education Month, a project of Mother Earth News and Grit magazine. Whether driven by economic or environmental concerns, interest in sustainable living - canning food, using solar power to live off the grid, gathering honey from a backyard beehive - is booming. Michele Ledoux, executive director of the Lewis County extension, said the fair was meant to support landowners who are wondering how to start small farms, raise animals and learn the preservation skills of a previous generation. "So many people now are into learning back-to-land skills," Ms. Ledoux said. Maple sugaring is huge, canning is huge, what's old is new. Here, we tried to offer a broad perspective of workshops to really educate so people will know what they're getting into. While speakers offered hands-on lessons - a horticulturalist layered lettuce and coffee into compost; a woman worked a spinning wheel for passers-by - the workshops focused less on the romantic realities of owning animals and working the land and more on advice: chain-saw safety, deworming goats and what to do when chickens get lice. By midday Saturday, Alexis Kadleck, 32, from Carthage, had heard about the basics of keeping sheep: the dangers of parasites, the need for fresh air and how to coax affection from the aloof animals (hand feeding them pretzels should do the trick). "We moved here from Texas to seek out a cleaner, more sustainable lifestyle," Ms. Kadleck said. She and her husband, an aircraft mechanic at Fort Drum, are raising two daughters under the age of 3 with the goal of "living as close to the earth as possible." She laughed. "If I could grow wheat I would," she said. The fair, held in picture-perfect barns at the Maple Ridge Center, drew visitors from northwestern New York, as well as Connecticut, Massachusetts and even Long Island. Heidi and Andy DiGiovanni, frustrated by what they described as a lack of local offerings, drove six hours from Glen Cove, on Long Island, to attend. "We're finding it harder and harder to try and sustain ourselves naturally," Ms. DiGiovanni, 54, said. A mother of three, she, like many other visitors, bemoaned the high costs of fresh produce and heating bills. I'm looking for different ideas that can work, that can raise the quality of life on Long Island. More than 50 people packed back-to-back lectures on energy efficiency and simple living by James Juczak, a self-described King of Scrounge from Adams Center, in nearby Jefferson County, who built his house - round and topped with an earthen roof - from scavenged and castoff materials: a masonry stove made from scrap cement, interior beams from a bowling alley. Mr. Juczak spoke of his used $700 Mercedes, powered by vegetable oil, and the compost toilets he built in his guesthouse. He counseled the crowd to be aware of treasures too easily thrown away and then revealed a photo of his family's bicycle collection, most of which had been found in trash containers, left there for the crime of having flat tires. Mr. Juczak shook his head. "I don't know who these people are," he said, "but I am really glad they exist."