Inspired By an Old Man

I had never heard of Scott Nearing until the other day when the librarian at the school where I work gave me the book you see in the picture above.  Mr. Nearing wrote scores of books and this was his last, written along with his wife when he was 95 years old.  He and his wife were true homesteaders who built their own houses (yes, they built more than one house and several other structures) from stones they pulled from the rocky New England soil where they lived.  They were strict vegetarians and lived almost entirely from their own gardening and fruit harvesting.  Upon further research I found out that Mr. Nearing lived to be one hundred years old and may have lived even longer had he not chosen to stop eating in order to control the time of his passing.  He attributed his longevity to his healthy diet and the physical labor required to produce it.  There are pictures in this book of him shoveling compost and gardening at age 95.

It's not the most well-written book and I would imagine the previous book entitled "The Good Life" is better as it is still in print and has good reviews.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading it and was inspired by my further research on his life and work.  There is much more that could be said about him but time does not permit me to do him justice here.  I hope this will pique your interest enough to look him up.  Here is a good place to start.

Thanks for the great read, Mr. Myers, and for introducing me to a homesteading hero.