Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life: Homesteading in the 1970s in the shadows of Helen and Scott Nearing, and how it all -- and they -- ended up

By Jean Hay Bright

Book Overview

Updated a decade after its original publication, this memoir by Jean Hay Bright chronicles the years in the 1970s when the author and her first husband, a traumatized Vietnam veteran, homesteaded on... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972092447
• ISBN13: 9780972092449
• Release Date: September 2013
• Publisher: Brightberry Press
• Length: 382 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A must read for anyone considering emulating the Nearings

Gives a much more realistic picture of the challenges and rewards of a self sufficient life off the land than The Good Life does, and clears up some of the details that were glazed over the The Good Life.

A must read if you "went back to the land"

Like many thousands of others, I was inspired by the books of Helen and Scott Nearing and left the corporate world in the mid '70's for the "simplicity" of "The good life" they espoused. The adventure, was much more difficult and complex than indicated by the Nearings. It was "good", but it definitely wasn't easy or "simple". I had never worked harder in my life! Eventually, I gave up trying to aspire to the Nearing's supposed example and while feeling guilt, made compromises.As the years progressed, I had a nagging suspicion that the aged Nearings hadn't done it all by themselves as they had claimed and that there was more to their story than was revealed. How could these two people, supposedly with little need for money, be "jet setting" world travelers. Their story, and the many articles written about them made less and less sense. Recently, I discovered the book "Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life", by Jean Hay Bright, who actually lived between the famed Helen and Scott Nearing, of "Living The Good Life" fame and the Eliot Coleman's, another well known "back to the lander" and organic farming "guru". With humor,honesty, and photos, Jean Hay Bright takes us through the building of their humble home from "scratch", while birthing, changing diapers, cooking on a wood stove, overhauling their VW Bus, raising organic produce, canning, heating with wood, raising goats and chickens, and even sawing ice blocks from a nearby lake to use in a home built "ice box". From my viewpoint, she and her, then, husband were closer to living as the Nearings taught, than the Nearings, who used electricity, with a freezer and refrigerator out of view in the basement. Her book is a very personal account of her back to the land adventure. It's a very honest book, revealing their failures as well as their successes. I both laughed and cried. In many ways, it was more educational than the books of their famed "advisors".With the curiosity of the investigative reporter she was and is, the author eventually explored the background of the Nearings and sets the record straight, telling us where the Nearing's money came from to "live their good life" simply and with little money, as they professed, and most of their "followers" believed. The many myths about the now deceased Nearings still abound in recent magazines. I was relieved to finally hear the truth. Jean Bright Hay's comments about the Nearings seem to be well balanced. She admired much about them and shares that with us also. Even if one has not heard of the Nearings, or gone back to the land, it's a wonderful book that touches the soul. It's definitely a book I will keep on my bookshelf and reread, rather than donate it to the local library.