Living The Good Life With Helen And Scott Nearing

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Food from the garden and wood from the forest were the product of our own time and labor. We paid no rent. Taxes were reasonable. We bought no candy, pastries, meats, soft drinks, alcohol, tea, coffee, or tobacco. These seemingly minor items mount up and occupy a large place in the ordinary family's budget. We spent little on clothes and knickknacks. We lighted for fifteen years with kerosene and candles. We never had a telephone or radio. Most of our furniture was built in and handmade. We did our trading in town not more than twice in a month, and then our purchases were scanty.

"Civilization," said Mark Twain, "is a limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessaries." A market economy seeks by ballyhoo to bamboozle consumers into buying things they neither need nor want, thus compelling them to sell their labor power as a means of paying for their purchases. Since our aim was liberation from the exploitation accompanying the sale of labor power, we were as wary of market lures as a wise mouse is wary of other traps.

Readers may label such a policy as painfully austere, renunciatory, or bordering on deliberate self-punishment. We had no such feeling. Coming from New York City, with its extravagant displays of non-essentials and its extensive wastes of everything from food and capital goods to time and energy, we were surprised and delighted to find how much of the city clutter and waste we could toss overboard.

We felt as free, in this respect, as a caged wild bird who finds himself once more on the wing. The demands and requirements which weigh upon city consumers no longer restricted us. To the extent that we were able to meet our consumer needs in our own way and in our own good time, we had freed ourselves from dependence upon the market economy.

Economically the successes achieved in the working out of the Vermont project far outweighed the failures. First and foremost, our idea of a subsistence homestead economy proved easy of realization. In exchange for, a few months per year of carefully planned bread-labor, we were able to provide ourselves with the bulk of our year's food. A few weeks of work furnished our house fuel. Another few weeks provided the needed repairs and replacements on buildings, tools, and equipment. Capital replacement of housing (new stone buildings for old wooden ones) was a more extensive task, involving considerable outlays of planning, time, energy, persistence, materials, and capital. Once a stone building was in place, however, the yearly cost of repairs and replacements fell almost to zero.

With this provision of necessaries went an unbelievable degree of good health, which is a matter of primary importance to people aiming at economic self-sufficiency on the one hand and social reconstruction on the other. Literally, we were always well, and on the rare occasions when the approaches of a cold appeared temporarily to lower our vitality, we followed the accepted practice of the cats and dogs of the neighborhood, and stopped eating until we felt fit.

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