Nearing Enough
(Page 4 of 6)
Their Good Life strategy also included using available building materials and doing the work of putting up their own stone and wood buildings, and even making many pieces of equipment themselves, such as ladders and sleds, while limiting the amount of purchased equipment. If they needed a bulldozer, chainsaw, plow or tractor for a few hours or days, they would rent, trade or barter for them with their neighbors.
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Helen Nearing wrote: "... we made serious and various attempts to live at five levels: with nature; by doing our daily stint of bread labor; by carrying on our professional activities; by constant association with our fellow citizens; and by unremitting efforts to cultivate the life of the mind and spirit."
They wrote that these five levels of living were contained in what they came to call their "four-four-four formula." Four hours of each day were directed towards "bread labor," the work that grows food or shovels out the outhouse.
Four hours a day were devoted to "professional activity," according to one's skills, loves and special competencies, whether that be playing the violin or writing books.
And four hours a day were "dedicated to fulfilling our obligations and responsibilities as members of the human race and as participants in various local, regional, national and world civic activities."
The Nearings' legacy continues to be the polestar, gyroscrope, map, heart, conscience and plumb line for living a good life.
CONTINUING THE GOOD LIFE
When Vermont began to be gobbled up by paper companies and the ski industry, the Nearings decided to move. "For 19 years we had homesteaded in the Green Mountains of Vermont. Now, as we pictured our future, why not spend the next 20 years beside the sea?" In the spring of 1952, Helen Nearing, 49, and Scott Nearing, 70, moved to Cape Rosier, Maine, which then was still isolated and affordable.
In Continuing the Good Life the Nearings wrote that on their first Maine homestead, they "put up nine stone and concrete constructions. One of the first jobs was the spillway and concrete core for the earth dam that gave us our acre and a half pond. Other undertakings early in our stay were several water tanks for the garden and the blueberry plantation, and a new tank for our bubbling spring. Another project was the 420-foot stone wall which encircled our quarter-acre vegetable garden. In the northwest corner of this garden wall we built a greenhouse with the stone wall as a backdrop and sun reflector. To the west of the greenhouse, also along the garden wall, we built a stone garage."
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