What happened to Barasui ( Ichigo Mashimaro's author )?
Ichigo Mashimaro is still being published, albeit slowly and irregularly. The author, Barasui, was on hiatus due to a sudden illness on 2015-08-29, but the rest of hiatuses were due to &quot;the author's circumstance&quot; until recently.

Regarding the serialization on Monthly Dengeki Daioh, according to the English Wikipedia, the title is still on-going. It's hinted clearer on the Japanese counterpart since it's included in the 現在連載中の作品 (currently serialized title) category instead of 休載中 (on hiatus).
Regarding the author, Barasui, according to Japanese Wikipedia, there's a remark about his irregular publishing time (or, hiatus) because of his unusually slow writing pace:

He was on hiatus from edition 2009-5 to 2010-2 (10 months)
Even if he did publish it, it was only an average of 5-6 pages including the cover page. However, the illustration was so detailed and each chapter could stand alone, making it a short-story manga
In edition 2015-12, he only published 8 pages compared to his previous usual 18 pages (also, compared to Yotsuba to!'s 28 pages)

Regarding the title itself, according to Japanese Wikipeda about the published date of the tankobon:


Volume 5: 2007-04-27
Volume 6: 2009-02-27 (1 year and 10 months later)
Volume 7: 2013-03-27 (4 years and 1 month later)

(parentheses mine)

However, according to the specialized wiki on atwiki (Japanese),

2017-05-27: Chapter 78 (4 pages) was published in edition 2017-07
2017-06-27: Chapter 78 (12 pages) was published in edition 2017-08, no plan for next chapter's number and announcement
2017-07-27: Barasui is on hiatus to work on the next tankobon
2017-08-10: The 8th volume appeared on Amazon Japan, to be released on 2017-11-27
2017-10-18: The author mentioned the release for the next tankobon on 2017-11-27 (on Barasui's image storehouse (Japanese))