Revisiting the Good Life
(Page 3 of 4)
October/November 2008
By Roger Doiron
While the Nearings did not plant any of the annuals we saw growing during our stay, the plants’ health and vibrancy were very much part of their legacy, too. The Nearings were organic gardeners of the first order, methodically building up the fertility of their soils through composting.
RELATED CONTENT
The formation and operation of the Los Angeles, California based labor cooperative, Free SIG (Speci...
How to Save Time. Labor and Money in Your Organic Garden March/April 1974 With a bit of know-how, s...
Cooperation with the birds and insects can take much of the work out of gardening, including tender...
Building a wood container that does the work for you, including diagrams, assembly, instructions....
A Plowboy Interview with Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of Living the Good Life and The Maple Sug...
So great was their composting enthusiasm that they “flunked” a soil test they had sent to the University of Maine. The report came back saying: “too rich; cut down on your compost spreading.” Coincidentally, I recently received the results of my own soil test from the University of Maine, and I’m still a long way from “failing” it. The good news is that my soil, although sandy, is naturally mineral-rich. With a little labor this year and next, I should be able to achieve an organic matter level over the magic 5 percent. Therein lies the challenge. Working in the garden for me and many other modern-day Nearingites is not our bread labor as much as it is our leisure.
One of the other obvious differences between my pursuit of the good life and the Nearings’ is that I’m trying to do what they did for a homestead of five instead of two. Their goal of finding balance between bread labor, leisure, and social and civic engagement is an important part of their legacy, but it remains a fleeting goal for many parents who juggle childcare, organic gardening and community service with jobs that offer benefits and allow them to save for college educations. Despite my best efforts, my cash crops — creating words for magazines and social change for nonprofit groups — still take far more than four hours a day to produce.
Lasting Influence
This year’s anniversaries offer an opportunity to take a fresh look at the Nearings’ efforts to live simply. Governments and companies are furiously proposing solutions that will allow us to consume happily in a warmed, resource-depleted world. It would be understandable if the Nearings’ soft-spoken lessons for living a responsible life got lost in all the eco-friendly noise. But it would also be unfortunate, because their writings are even more relevant now given the challenges upon us.
To measure the Nearings’ legacy accurately, one must consider their accomplishments, but also those of the many people who were profoundly influenced by the Nearings, and went on to make the world a little saner in their own way. These include organic agriculture advocates Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch, who live just up the road from Forest Farm on land purchased from the Nearings, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Studs Terkel, who admired and wrote about the Nearings’ efforts to define the American dream along more sustainable lines.
