[.ca] The Good Life (ISBN 0805209700)

Fed up with city life? read this!:
This book is about a couple who develop a self-sufficient life style. Originally I bought the book as a blue print for retirement so that I could pluck from it those things I wanted for my family - a very good guide for such a purpose. However, the Nearings had a very strong set of principles, which sets them aside from most people who want to get away from city life. An initial period of work in his grandfather's mine alongside immigrant workers turned Scott into an outspoken critic of the social system resulting in his being fired from his university post and made unemployable. Royalties on his textbooks, widely used in the educational system, ceased. Scott's wife, Helen, was also a very high-principled person. Perhaps this was the ultimate secret of their long-term success - they were completely uncompromising on whatever principles they adopted. Helen Nearing tells us that they left the city with three objectives: - economic: independence from the commodity and labor markets - hygienic: to maintain and improve health - social and ethical: to liberate and dissociate from the cruder forms of exploitation - plunder of the planet, slavery of man and beast, slaughter in war and animals for food. They were against the accumulation of profit and unearned income by non-producers. She goes on to tell us that after 20 years: - a piece of eroded, depleted mountain land had been restored to fertility - a successful economy without animals, animal products, chemical fertilizers had been created - a subsistence household had been established , paying its way and yielding a modest surplus - a small scale business had been established from which wagery had been virtually eliminated - health was at a high level - the complexities of city life had been replaced by a simple life pattern - they enjoyed six months labor and six months leisure used for research, travel, writing, speaking, teaching - they always had an open house for hundreds of people annually We are told that no family group of vigor, energy, purpose, imagination and determination need continue to wear the yoke of a competitive, acquisitive, and predatory culture. A family can live with nature, make a living, preserve and enhance efficiency, enjoy leisure, and do their part to make the world a better place. They maintain that a couple of any age 20-50 with minimum health, intelligence and capital can adapt to country living, learn its crafts, overcome its difficulties and build a rich pattern of life of simple values, being productive of personal and social good. If you have wondered whether city life is for you, there is no better book to read than "The Good Life".

Essential reading:
This book is a reprint of two classics "Living the good life" and "Continuing the good life". In these books, Scott and Helen Nearing describe how they chose to live deliberately, and built for themselves a sustainable life and lifestyle in Vermont and Maine. In "Living the good life", they explain some of the circumstances that led them to stage a strategic withdrawal from New York City and relocate to a run-down farm in Vermont during the 1930s. They describe how they acquired and developed their land, how they built their house, and their garden and diet. A major focus of the book is explaining their philosophy of non-exploitation, and how they wanted to implement their ideas of social justice into their lifestyle. The Nearings believed so strongly in avoiding exploitation of any kind that they avoided resorting to animal labor or products on their farm. They arranged their days so that they could spend 4 hours doing bread labor, 4 hours working with the community, and had 4 hours of free time each day to pursue independent interests. They also describe how they earned cash income from maple sugaring on their property. Towards the end of this first section, they explain that growing crowds of visitors, combined with a general lack of cooperation in the community eventually convinced them to abandon their project in Vermont and move on to Maine. In "Continuing the Good Life," the Nearings describe how they built a second homestead in Maine. Once again, they explain how they constructed a house from stone, and how they developed a case income, this time based on blueberries. Gardening and diet is also given more space in this volume than it had in "Living the Good Life". This book is rich with both inspiration and practical details. Scott Nearing was a well published academic in the field of economics before he started the adventures described in these volumes. As a result, his style of writing is rather academic, and his chapters contain quite a few footnotes. It's a little strange to read this book out of context, to dive right in without knowing anything about the Nearings beforehand. This is what I did the first time I read the book, and I found the premise of the adventure rather preposterous- -two city people going off to establish a commune in the mountains during the 1930s. They mentioned that they earned some money from traveling and writing. Without further explanation, I thought they were travel writers or something. It wasn't until I read John Saltmarsh's book The Making of a Homesteader that I began to get the full picture. In that book, Saltmarsh describes how Scott Nearing had been a very successful economics professor in the first decade of the century. However, he was a very outspoken pacifist, and lost his teaching positions because of his politics. He was living in New York City, separated from his wife, when he met Helen, his soul mate. Because of his political stances, Nearing was recruited by the Communist Party as an educator and politician. However, he was too much a freethinker for the communists, and was soon expelled from the party for continuing to voice his independent ideas. It was at this point, when he was about 50, when he and Helen began their Good Life experiment in Vermont. With this background in mind, Nearing's comments and opinions stated in this book make a lot more sense.

an inspiration, a vision, and a conundrum:
This book first came into our lives a good 15 years ago. Since then, because of our interest and pursuit of homesteading, we have read and re-read it and much more about the Nearings. This particular book chronicles their lives setting up their homesteads in Vermont and in Maine. There is much to admire -- their strength, tenacity, and very liveliness should be inspiration to any back-to-the-land-er. But there are also contradictions and conundrums -- like did his brand of Communism not pay attention to Lenin? Did that wire fence not serve the 15 years it took to construct the stone one? What is the ideal against using animals when one will condone them as pets and as producers of products one uses freely (not admitted to in this book but clear in others)? Alas, the dichotomies only serve to make them more interesting and perhaps more useful to those of us who would use their reflection to more clearly see in our own mirrors. There is very little hard, factual, useful information in this book, but the depth and breadth of the vision is astounding.

One of those book I treasure and re-read a lot:
This is a wonderful book if you want to learn what to do and what not to do if you desire to be as self sufficient as possible. I especially appreciated the sections on eating for health as well as what they eat and why. But it is the sections on how they supported themselves with blueberries and maple syrup that I appreciated so, because they explain how they used what was native to their area, as a means of support, but only as much as they needed. They never "raped" the earth in order to survive, but instead are demonstrative of what a legitimate wise steward is or should be. I also liked the section on how they came to use hand laid stone wall fences rather than wire fences. And the choice and use of wood for heating, which in 2003 is even more efficient with stove inserts that have catalytic converters so air pollution is diminished drastically. Although I believe if they were alive that a solar home would have been their main source of energy. And their section on building a garden soil with compost and no artificial fertilizer is something anyone who wants to grow a hearty organic vegetable garden should read. We have used their sage advise and people joke that our garden must be on steroids. Chapter seven dealing with water issues is a must read for anyone looking into buying land and buying land for the purpose of living on it and surviving.Needless to say I like all their books and read and re-read them gleaning valuable information each time.

Not a how-to book:
I was very interested in reading about a couple who took the plunge and homesteaded. I found the references to why they moved to the homestead interesting, but unfortunately, the rest of the book is interweaved with this philosophy as well as social issues. The practical is overshadowed or not explained in detail. The detail that is there focuses on what they did not how they did it. If you are looking for a how-to book, you should look elsewhere. I did find the section on health interesting and helpful. Also, the second section, "Continuing the Good Life" had some practical ideas on gardening. Overall the book was a disappointment, since I expected a how-to book not a philosophy book.