In the summer of 2015, we took a two week vacation to Maine. The purpose of the trip was mainly to rest and think about how we wanted to direct our life’s goals, but I wanted to stop by the house of two of our homesteading heroes, Scott and Helen Nearing. Helen and Scott built this house in their later years. They built a self sustaining homestead in Vermont in the 1930’s. In 1953, they sold the homestead, purchased property in Maine and started again. The books, The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living and Loving and Leaving the Good Life, describe how Helen and Scott lived a self-sufficient life and created a legacy that would be an inspiration to people during their lives and long after they both were gone. The house and grounds are preserved as a teaching center for folks who are interested in such things. We happen to be quite interested and learned a lot from the visit. Scott and Helen did not live in a tiny house, but they built it themselves from stones found and gathered and were self-sufficient in their living habits.
We interviewed to be the residents for the house for 2023. That would last from May until Indigenous Peoples’ Day. We are waiting to hear. If we are chosen, we will blog about the experience here.
