Helen and Scott Nearing: Living the Good Life

Helen and Scott Nearing stand as iconic figures in the 20th-century “back to the land” movement. Scott, an economist and radical social critic, had been blacklisted in academia for his outspoken opposition to child labor, militarism, and corporate exploitation. Helen, nearly 20 years his junior, was an activist, musician, and later a committed writer in her own right. Together, beginning in the 1930s, they rejected industrial society and deliberately chose a life of simplicity, self-sufficiency, and agrarian labor. Their decision to move to rural Vermont, and later to Maine, was not only a personal quest but a social experiment that became a model for generations of idealists seeking an alternative to mainstream consumer culture.

Their most famous work, Living the Good Life (first self-published in the 1950s and later widely read after its reissue in the 1970s), spelled out their philosophy. For the Nearings, “the good life” meant balancing four key areas: meaningful manual labor (particularly gardening and homesteading), intellectual pursuits, community involvement, and leisure or contemplation. They argued that industrial society enslaved people to wages and machines, while a carefully planned, small-scale homestead could provide both physical sustenance and spiritual fulfillment. They advocated working just four hours a day in the garden or on building projects, and spending the rest of one’s time on study, reading, music, and creative activity.

Food and diet were central to their lifestyle. The Nearings ate a largely vegetarian diet, avoiding processed foods and animal products, and relying heavily on produce from their own gardens. They were early advocates of whole grains, legumes, fresh fruits, and vegetables long before such diets became popular. Their gardens were meticulously planned to provide year-round nutrition, and they saw food not only as fuel but as an ethical and spiritual matter. In their view, living from one’s own land and eating simply was an act of liberation from industrial agriculture and the food industry, which they distrusted. They also championed organic gardening methods decades before “organic” became a mainstream term, composting religiously and emphasizing soil health as the foundation of human health.

Their philosophy and lifestyle clearly worked: both Nearings lived long, vibrant lives—Scott to the age of 100 and Helen to 91—remaining active, mentally sharp, and creative right up until the end of their days.

The Nearings’ writings—including Living the Good Life and Continuing the Good Life—became bibles for the wave of young “back to the land” seekers in the 1960s and 1970s. Hippies, countercultural idealists, and others who rejected consumer society flocked to their homestead in Maine, where the Nearings welcomed visitors and modeled a lifestyle of rigorous simplicity and integrity. They inspired not only homesteaders and small farmers but also the modern organic food and sustainability movements.

Their legacy is multifaceted: they showed that radical simplicity could be intellectually rich, that a diet of home-grown vegetarian foods could sustain vitality, and that an ethic of self-reliance could coexist with generosity toward others. For later generations, they stood as proof that an alternative to mainstream consumerism was possible—not just a dream, but a lived reality, one bean patch and one loaf of whole-grain bread at a time.

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