"Living The Good Life" by Scott and Helen Nearing

"Through their 60 years of living on the land in rural New England, their commitment to social and economic justice, their numerous books and articles, and the time they shared with thousands of visitors to their homestead, the Nearings embodied a philosophy that has come to be recognized as a centerpiece of America's "Back to the Land" and "Simple Living" movements."



The books "Living The Good Life" and "Continuing The Good Life" are available under one title "The Good Life" at amazon.com

...and at The Good Life Center at THE GOOD LIFE.ORG
"The mission of The Good Life Center is to perpetuate the philosophies and lifeways of Helen and Scott Nearing, two of America's most inspirational practitioners of simple, frugal and purposeful living. Building on the Nearing legacy, The Good Life Center encourages and supports individual and collective efforts to live sustainably. Guided by the principles of kindness, respect and compassion in relationships with natural and human communities, The Good Life Center promotes active participation in the advancement of social justice, creative integration of the life of the mind, body and spirit, and deliberate choice in living responsibly and harmoniously."


"In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, Helen and Scott Nearing moved from their small apartment in New York City to a dilapidated farmhouse on 65 acres in Vermont. For over 20 years, they created fertile, organic gardens, hand-crafted stone buildings, and a practice of living simply and sustainably on the land. In 1952, they moved to the Maine coast, where they later built their last stone home - Forest Farm."

SCOTT NEARING wikipedia



context.org/ essays by helen nearing


'a visit to helen and scott nearings'...this blog has the best pictures of the Nearings homestead that I've found on line including their wonderful yurts.
the nearings passive solar greenhouse...

.....A short story of someone who inspired the Nearings


MOTHER EARTH NEWS ARTICLE about the NEARINGS1977

Helen and Scott Nearing have been living today's counterculture for better than a generation. Almost four decades ago (in 1932), the couple "dropped out" to a rockscrabble mountain farm in Vermont's Green Mountains where they spent the next 20 years rebuilding the soil, constructing solid homestead buildings from native stone, growing their own food, heating with wood they cut by hand, and co-authoring numerous books and magazine articles. Tick off any of the present's most "in" passions — women's lib, equal rights, organic gardening, vegetarianism, radicalism, homesteading, subsistence farming, ecology — and you'll find that the Nearings have been doing instead of talking for 40 years.

(quote from 1977 article)

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/living-the-good-life-zmaz77mazbon.aspx#ixzz37chKmcUb

[youtube] [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aKJVCwzwv0[/youtube][/youtube]

Our vacation last year was to the good life center. Scott and Helen, alon with their teachings mean the world to me. The people running the center are fantastic as well. <3

A person whom the Nearings met on the Mexico trip was Juliet de Baïracli Levy. Several classic books, including The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable , et al.

Here is a link to the book that Susan mentions....The Complete Herbal Handbook for Farm and Stable

I give this book 8/10 acorns....
Helen and Scott Nearing inspired me with this book when I was 19. Their homestead in maine was just a half hour away from where I spent my summers and though it took me till I was 19 and Helen was dead to read the book, it changed how I saw the world, and how I wanted to live in it. This shows you how little you can live on and how much you can reap from a hard earned life. How to be a conscientious visitor to a farmstead, as well as give you a new view on why not to own farm animals. Helen and Scott take you through a life that was more than good -it was unbelievable, poetic, and gave you the sustainable bug! This book lead me to recognize permaculture as an old friend when I came across Bill mollisons designers manual at 22 AND pay the 70$ for it. If you want a book to inspire you to tap a tree to make syrup, start rock piles to build your own stone home, or take a peek at how self sufficient vegetarians live-among many other things- get this book!

I'd give this 8 of 10 acorns.

Although their large use of annuals and no animals doesn't fit will with most current thinking on permaculture this book is a great story of homesteading and self reliance.

I read The Good Life when I was in college at Appalachian State University.

The book was awesome and I was lucky my school had an interdisciplinary course called Simple Living, of which studying the Nearings was a part.

This is the Alaskan version of the story with a Hermit twist:

Trust fund folk who spent their winters on the lecture circuit, rather than in their very cold house. Despite their comments about local materials and indigenous design, there was an architect who designed it and used doug fir beams, that had to be shipped from the Pacific Northwest. Plenty of idealistic young folk contributed an afternoon of labor here and there too. Their maple and blueberry operations never provided any sort of living income. There was a brand new truck every year. His "vegan diet" included ice cream and B-12 shots. They made their money (other than what they had from the fund) by publishing, and those books were mostly pipe dreams and fiction. Their rock garden walls are mostly fallen down now, because there wasn't enough cement in the concrete.

Sorry to burst the bubble.