[2] Since its founding, Mother Earth News has promoted renewable energy, recycling, family farms, good agricultural practices, better eating habits, medical self-care, more meaningful education and affordable housing.

Unlike many other magazines with ecological coverage, Mother Earth News concentrated on do-it-yourself and how-to articles, aimed at the growing number of people moving to the country.

With its left-of-center perspective, The Mother Earth News attracted a wide readership, not only of back to the landers but also others ranging from hippies, to survivalists, to suburban dwellers who dreamed of someday moving to the country, to long-time rural dwellers who found the DIY articles useful.

"And yet, as favored as we are by all this real wealth, we somehow perversely prefer to spend almost all waking hours interpreting the sum total of this reality in terms of the narrow and distorted, strictly human-centered concept of money.

The Eco-Village, a 600-acre (240 ha) research center, was in full swing with vast experimental gardens, houses, and energy projects.

A radio show shared the magazine's philosophies on hundreds of stations nationwide and alternative fuel vehicles carrying the Mother Earth News logo criss-crossed the country.

Eventually, it was sold to the New American Company in 1986, who redesigned it with a much slicker image and repositioned it as "The Original Country Magazine."

[9] Sussex Publishers in New York City owned the magazine until 2001, when it was acquired by its current owners, Ogden Publications.