Posted on 06/21/2011 2:45:35 PM PDT by Kartographer
Try as they might, Trevor Seip and Jennifer Sansosti cannot contain their excitement.
The young engaged couple recently shipped their lives from out of state to a rustic, 63-acre property they bought on Winkumpaugh Road, where they hope to build a home and future together.
They are not the first to move to rural Maine from a more heavily populated part of the East Coast — Pennsylvania in their case — with dreams of homesteading in the woods. Nor are they the first to do so while in possession of a well-thumbed copy of “The Good Life,” the 1954 book by former Brooksville residents Helen and Scott Nearing that has served as a manual for simple, sustainable living for so many.
“It’s full of life,” Sansosti said of their wooded property which abuts a stream that flows toward Branch Lake. “It has an abundance of natural resources.”
(Excerpt) Read more at bangordailynews.com ...
We're just east of Worcester, and I agree. Though in our 23 years here, we've had a couple of winters like that; early on. But we're making plans to remodel, get the heck out of here and move back home to MS, and I'd love to do it before next winter. Remains to be seen if we can do it, but I'd sure love NOT to spend another winter here that's like the last one.
I’ve seen a bit of info about them before but figured (rightly or wrongly) that they would work in very arid climates but not with very wet winters. We get on the average about 65 inches a year, in about 7 months mostly. We do have very clay soil, though! Or rather, very clayey clay.
;-)
Two: With all information and uniquely designed homes made from containers - they simply plunked the two down, separately, and are living in a space only 8’ wide. That's going to shrink considerable come the winter months!
If they had simply put them side by side and converted into a 16’ x 20’ living area - it would be quite comfortable - if spaced them side by side with 4-8’ in between, then simply connecting them with a roof and end walls, they'd have a really comfortable place - with enough space to have a wood stove safely.
Now, back to Helen and Scot Nearing.
she was from Europe, born into wealth. Scot was from Pennsylvania. She met him when she was 20-21 and he was in his 40’s, jobless, a Communist - a teacher who could no longer get a job due to his writings.
He thoroughly converted her and they bought a farm in Vermont but were never accepted by the locals. Years later, they moved to Maine.
In both places, they had hundreds of young people who wanted to learn how to ‘live the good life’ would come to visit - and end up building walls, cutting wood, weeding gardens, helping to build the houses, etc - FREE.
The home in Maine is a lovely Swiss Chalet style, two story stone and wood. NOT austere at all. Even after Scot died, at 100, hundreds would make their way to the ‘homestead’ and find themselves doing chores - and maybe be fed a bowl of popcorn.
And what most people never realized was that Helen and Scot didn't ‘winter’ in Maine. Palm Beach and the French Riviera was where they skipped off to.
Now there is a couple up there that bought a good chunk of the Nearings land - I think soon after Helen died - who IS living the way people thought the Nearings did.
http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/
I grew up (I'm a great gramma now) on a farm further up north with my grandparents. That was s time before electricity was put in. People then lived the way the Nearings pretended to. (The Nearings money came from their writings, not from ‘homesteading’ or farming.)
ON my grandparents farm - and the others up there - , they were truly independent - never had to work off the farm. With our gardens - vegetables, fruits, berries, eggs and chickens in the coop, beef, milk and pork in the barn, wild game in the woods, fish in the waters - we always had a years worth of food on hand. For thing we couldn't produce, like sugar, molasses, coffee, flour - grammie traded her butter and sold her eggs - and cabbage from her market garden. Grampa sold and traded his berries, was a Maine Guide and, with his gas powered lathe, made tennis racket frames for a famous outfit - and so on.
REAL self-sufficient people.
We watch young people like this come to Maine with stars in their eyes and “The Good Life” under their arms. Not many make it. But I wish them luck - they have, at least, chosen a good area where people will help them.
I wish them well, tripping over one another this winter in a 8’ wide space.
Agreed. I read all of Nearings books and Mother Earth News back in the 70’s. It’s damn hard work and it’s usually only obtainable if you don’t have a real job, but you still need money.
I didn’t know all that about the Nearings. Interesting!
I suppose the Nearings were paid for their books and articles thus giving them some real money ,unlike the average schmuck who tried to live in that style.
Some other publications seem to have a few prolific writers of how-to-survive-on-nothing but I just bet without the checks from writing they’d be looking for work.
Subsidence gardening and disinclination to have offspring is NOT a long term social survival mechanism.
I think people like the Nearing ought really to held up as example of social misfits who lead people to waste their lives.
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