The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living
by Scott Nearing, Helen Nearing

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Book Reviews of The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living

Book Review: A No-Nonsense Guide to a REAL Alternative Lifestyle!
Summary: 5 Stars

... Here are just a few of the pieces of wisdom you will find in this book... from pages 33 and 34: "3. All of our operations will be kept on a cash and carry basis. No bank loans. No slavery to interest on mortgages, notes and I.O.U's. Under any economy, people who rent out money live on easy street. Whether as individuals or banking establishments, they lend money, take security and live on a rich harvest of interest and the proceeds of forced sales. The money lenders are able to enjoy comfort and luxury, without doing any productive labor. It is the borrowing producers who pay the interest or lose their property. Farmers and home owners by the thousands lost everything they had during the Great Depression because they could not meet interest payments. We decided to buy for cash or not at all." ... But, don't be fooled into thinking by reading the sage advice that runs through this book like pure streams of mountain water that this is a book of philosophy! FAR FROM! This book is chock full of PRACTICAL ADVICE and pages and pages of HOW-TO'S that will increase your confidence to actually try implementing some of these keen techniques yourself!

... An example of the same can be found here, on page 282: "The Chinese drain their ponds and ditches, making special provision for the survival of their fish. They clear ditches and ponds of all accumulated refuse. When the ponds are emptied of silt, the gates are put back in the dams and the ponds are refilled. The accumulated silt and usable trash from the bottom are spread on the land or on compost piles. The product, as with us, will be a pile of first-class rotted sod which can be used in greenhouse, in mulching fruit bushes and trees, in compost making or transplanting. What we are doing on a few square yards of a North American farm, the Chinese are doing on a nationwide scale. They are planning their agriculture, dovetailing it with the changing seasons and the weather and building their farming base."

... I could go on and on further, quoting page after page of practical gardening tips, wall-building instructions, compost-pile producing advice, maple sugar-making lore, and more philosophical, sociological, and political wisdom as well. Unlike this book, it would be fruitless! You simply must read this book for yourself if you want to get any clear idea at all of what it would be like to be truly independent and living in the country - as well as what it would take to do so. The Nearings have proven to us all that it CAN be done. "The proof is in the pudding," as they say - and the pudding is The Good Life they have lived. It's all here in this book. GO FOR IT! ... YOWZA! - The Aeolian Kid

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