WEBVTT

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[music]

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[sil.]

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(inaudible).

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All right, I can use the rest.

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Helen and Scott Nearing quit city life

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and moved to Vermont during
the Great Depression in 1932.

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Like generations of Americans before
them, their plan was to homestead

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– to grow their own food,
gather the necessary fuel,

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provide their own shelter. Unlike so
many others, theirs is a success story.

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[sil.]

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Internationalists,
socialists, the centralists,

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naturalists - Helen and Scott
Nearing have been an inspiration

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- and thousands and thousands of people
around the planet. Welcome to Nearings.

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[sil.]

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Now… Now for some practical details.

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Scott was well known as a brilliant orator and
outspoken social critique as early as 1915

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when his dismissal from the economics
faculty of the University of Pennsylvania

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caused a storm of protest. His offence:

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he had repeatedly attacked big business
for hiring children as factory workers.

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For 60 years, the Nearings
have consistently condemned

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all forms of exploitation and
urged those who would listen

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to return to fundamental economic principles.
I want to say in a little detail

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– pay as

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you go.

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[sil.]

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At the height of the First World War, Scott
published a pamphlet denouncing corporate interest

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as the underlying cause. Though he was
acquitted of treason, he has been blacklisted

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ever since by the teaching profession.

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Helen is 20 years younger and a lifelong
vegetarian. She was trained as a concert violinist

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and had none of the practical skills
that Scott had learned as a child.

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[sil.]

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Together, they turned their backs on the market
economy and resolved to be self-subsistent.

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[sil.]

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(inaudible) I\'m concerned, I prefer to
have nothing to do with the (inaudible).

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We don\'t owe anybody a nickel.
We don\'t borrow any money.

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We don\'t pay any interest.

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And we prefer to pay

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as we go and wish the bankers would
find useful occupation for themselves

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and let the economy alone.

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Before the first war, Scott\'s
books on basic economics

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were standard school texts, but when he
was blacklisted, his books were removed

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from the market. Publishers still shy away
from his prolific and radical writings,

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so the Nearings published them themselves under
the name of the Social Science Institute,

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filling orders right out of their own home.

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After 20 years of successful
homesteading in Vermont,

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they had to abandon the first Forest Farm. The ski
industry had moved in and turned the wilderness

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at Stratton Mountain into a resort, so the
Nearings started all over again in Maine,

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building up the soil on
another derelict farm.

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During the 1920s,

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Helen had been part of a group which stirred
public interest in Eastern religious thought.

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She had traveled through Europe and to India with a young
Christian (inaudible), while Scott was filling holes

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the size of Madison Square Garden for his political
debates with Clarence Darrow and Bertrand Russell.

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In 1918, Scott ran for Congress
on the Socialist ticket

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against Fiorello LaGuardia and in
1928, for governor of New Jersey.

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So it\'s perhaps ironic that the Nearings

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are now best known as homesteaders, but that\'s
because they\'ve made an eye to homestead living.

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[sil.]

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Every year, 2500 visitors walk
up this remote country road

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to see and hear the good life in action.

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Most of them come unannounced.
We\'re trying to build up the soil,

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not to wear it down. And the
way to build it up is to get

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every smidge of material that you can get in
your hands on and put it back into the soil.

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The Chinese do this. They do
it in other parts of Asia.

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They\'ve been doing it, as Professor
King said, for 4,000 years

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and their soil remains good,
viable, productive soil.

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And we\'ve been here in this country for only
250 years - I mean, we wiped Western Europeans

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– and we lost about 40% of our
top soil during that time.

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It runs down the Penobscot River and the Hudson
River and Mississippi River into the ocean.

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And every time you let the
water run across the land

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and come out yellow and
murky and full of silt,

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full of compost, full of humus, every time
you do that, you\'re impoverishing the soil.

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It doesn\'t make any difference
what your bank account is.

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If you don\'t have top soil, you
can\'t raise wheat and onions.

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Today, 300 would-be homesteaders have
come to the see the latest developments

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at Forest Farm. Helen shows them the new house
that she and Scott have just finished building,

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overlooking Penobscot Bay.
We take no animal residues,

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no bone meal, no tankage, no dried
blood – none of these things,

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because as vegetarians we\'re against the slaughter
business and we don\'t want to participate in it.

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As a matter of fact, we\'ve been
here 24 years, on this place

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and no animal residues have been used on the
place during those 24 years incidentally.

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This ground here was plowed in 1952

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and it hasn\'t been plowed or herd since.
It\'s been worked a little

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with hand tools - hand
cultivators, hand tools.

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Now we did the whole house

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from mixing in wheel barrow. We have a concrete mixture
and we even got a little engine attached to it

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and we gave it… gave it away because we don\'t like
the noise of it and we don\'t like the oil of it.

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And also, we do so little at a time that then we
have to clean the damn machine. It took us long

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to clean the machine as a bid to mix up
the mixture. So we worked the whole house

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with just a wheel barrow. Scott
made most of the mixtures

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and I did all the stonework. I wouldn\'t
let anybody put in another stone,

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just a fancy of mine. In
Vermont, I let people help.

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Here, I thought I\'d have my house. So
this is a one woman-one man house.

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The Pope Robert Louis Stevenson

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to travel hopefully is
better than to arrive

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and the true success is the laborers.
The majority of visitors to Forest Farm

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aren\'t used to manual labor - getting ahead
in our society means getting someone else

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to do the work. But those visitors,
who want to have a seminar here,

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are in for a surprise. The Nearings believe in working
at the good light rather than talking about it.

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[sil.]

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After 45 years of homesteading, the
Nearings make it look deceptively easy.

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They\'ve always known what they wanted.
They\'re able to make plans

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five, ten years in advance and they have the
skill and strength of purpose to carry them out.

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This swamp ran

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right across the face of the hill. There is a hill,
at the bottom of the hill there was a swamp.

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This is part of the swamp, right there, and
this is another part of the swamp, here.

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And the difference is that we\'ve been working at
this part of the swamp for the last 23 years.

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And in the course of that time we
converted this swamp into a… into a pond.

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We\'ve taken 14,000-15,000 wheel
barrow loads of material

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out of the pond. We said,
no… no… no bulldozer,

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we were going to do this ourselves. This
isn\'t random. This all has to be planned

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and thought out and each shovel full and
each wheel barrow full has to follow

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an ordinary line of - what should
we call it? – scientific procedure

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from swamp and wilderness into
pond, garden and other amenities

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of modern homestead living.
Having the disciple to make plans

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is one thing, but on the homestead you
have to be flexible enough to change focus

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at a moment\'s notice. If you have
a dam, you repair it every year,

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sometimes several times a year. Every
time you see a new… a new leak,

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you plug the leak.

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As the dam expert said to me, he said that
\"never been a dam built yet that didn\'t leak,\"

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because water still dominates man.

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And when I get all through here
and… and do this, you know,

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the water will be running
down through the dam.

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That\'s what the water will say.

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It will be a simple thing if you
could put a nickel in the slot,

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if you see them push something and have…
have sand which come out of the other end.

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Uh… It would be very easy. And this… this
is what happens on… on 42nd and Broadway

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- you can stick a nickel in the slot and get
a sandwich or a dollar, whatever it is now.

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But here, there isn\'t any slot
and there isn\'t any nickel

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and there isn\'t any sandwich. Here you have to make
it all yourself. And when you go to find a tool,

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it\'s over at the other place.

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It\'s already over there.

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[sil.]

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The new house they are building is a quarter mile
away through the woods. So it was just a wilderness.

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It was just deep woods like that
there, much deeper, really a mess.

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We cleared all the trees. We cleared down
the brush. We\'ll never make a lawn in here.

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It\'ll be left just like that, just wild,
but it will be close-cropped, GI cut.

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When you cut down the trees that
were necessary as soon as possible

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and then we had to put in a
road because it was so rough.

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So we gathered (inaudible)
gravel from the beach down there

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for the road and saved the good gravel and
the good stones for the house building.

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We also used this cove for getting seaweed.

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And generally it\'s a nice cove

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and its shore is low. We could
get down there with the truck,

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with the car and there we get all gravel

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and our seaweed and our
sand for the building.

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The Nearings are not sentimental about old
structures. They love to build and have developed

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their own much copied method.

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The new house is their 15th building and
they\'ve all been made of made-of stone.

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[sil.]

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Where stones are free for the asking, their strength and
beauty makes them a natural choice for homesteaders.

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[sil.]

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Fishy, and he\'s eating another fish.

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The one in front, I can
show is blood stained.

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I fell off a… I didn\'t
fall off the scaffold.

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The scaffold gave way under me. I\'d had too many
rocks on it and it was rotten and down I went,

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crashed and got blood on the stone,
but the blood is on the wall now.

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The stones here are smaller than
in the mud. We had granite there.

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We had good, great, big granite. You ever see that place, a huge
stone. Here, they\'re smaller because we got them from the beach.

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And we\'d used lot of the good ones
on the stonewall around the garden.

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So these are the pickings.
We like stone – solid.

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It\'s there for a while.

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I have a bowing acquaintance
for (inaudible).

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[sil.]

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In our uncertain nuclear future, the homesteading
movement is once again gaining ground,

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as more and more people
reject affluence as the goal.

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If you build the tower of (inaudible) high
enough, surely you will reach heaven.

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So we\'re building hundred story buildings

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in New York and Chicago and Los Angeles
hoping to get to heaven that way.

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The last time I was in New
York, I went into a building.

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And when the outside air… when
there was (inaudible) outside air,

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the window was locked. You couldn\'t air
through, you couldn\'t get sunlight through,

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you couldn\'t see out. You\'re… Well, it\'s
just exactly like being in a dungeon.

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And we were on – I forget – the
28th floor or something like that

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hopelessly removed from the
earth and all these contacts.

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And the only thing you have the telephone
and electric light and this utility

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and that utility for which
you pay through the nose.

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So what do you gain? What… What\'s your
advantage? Well, two weeks a year

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or three weeks a year, you go to
Maine or you go here or you go there

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and have a vacation, and then you
say, well, back to the slave pen,

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back to the slave pen, back to the whip,

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back to the… to the tyranny of
doing things that in themselves

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are really not worth my doing.
Now, I enjoy cutting this.

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This is… This is waste. This…
This rejected P brush is waste.

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I\'ve been cutting this up
for an hour this morning.

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I had a (inaudible) good time doing this. I
would rather do this than play tennis or golf

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or anything that you can mention. And I certainly
would rather do this than watch television

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or listen to neighboring gossip
about nothing in particular.

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I had a real… I had a real nice time
- fresh air, sunshine, (inaudible),

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no… no extra charge. This is the good life.

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This is a good life. And as far as
I\'m concerned, there isn\'t anything

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that you can offer me. If you
offer me a large sum of money

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and say here\'s such and such sum of
money, buy yourself what you want

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and my answer is that nothing I
want, there\'s nothing I need.

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My food needs… my food needs are met.
My housing needs are met.

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My clothing needs are met. My need for fuel in
the wintertime are being met in this process.

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There isn\'t anything that we want.

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[sil.]

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We eat it simply as possible,

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because I don\'t like housework. I\'d
rather be outdoors than doing housework

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and that the meals are
literally (inaudible).

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On the homestead what you
determines to a large extent

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the amount and nature of the work
you have to do. From the onset,

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Helen and Scott were determined to avoid the drudgery
that fills the lives of so many small farmers.

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As vegetarians, they had one big advantage.
Now a little parsley

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and lunch is ready. No need to plant
acres of grain to feed the animals

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and no need to build a barn and
outbuilding for shelter and storage.

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In this 100-foot square organic garden,
they grow most of their own food.

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And with the aid of a sun-heated
greenhouse, they grow it year round.

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[sil.]

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Yes, ma\'am. Lunch, lunch, lunch.
Scott? Yeah. (inaudible).

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Their diet also enables them
to maintain the balanced day

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which they hold so important – four hours
of bread labor before lunch at noon,

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four hours devoted to their professional
interests and four hours given over

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to the responsibilities as citizens.
Now, almost everything on the table

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is good to eat - no dust,
no sprays, no poisons,

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very few food combinations,

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a lot of simplicity and…
(inaudible) with the housewife.

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Well, the housewife also eats.

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Now, good digestion way on appetite

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and health on both. I don\'t bake bread.

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Bread is far too work for the housewife.
But instead we get

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grains unfussed with. We have millet

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or barley or rye or oats.

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And if the 20 proverbial people walk up
the road I can put on some buckwheat,

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pour some boiling water over it, put at the
back of the stove and in 10 minutes I have

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a cooked and ready grain for them. But their
diet is not just helpful, practical and simple,

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it\'s also a matter of principle.
The important thing for you is

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to live a good life yourself. And living a
good life, a part of living a good life

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is learning to live with
other creatures who are also

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inhabiting the planet at the same time that
we are - not exploiting them, not using them,

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not overriding them…

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Not preying on them. Not preying
on them, not eating them,

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not enslaving them of course.
And not being slaves to them.

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[sil.]

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
I come up here for rest and quiet

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
and there are too many people down there, I told Scott, I\'m going
to go out and pick blueberries. And I come up and pick them.

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
[sil.]

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
They sound like syrup,

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
maple syrup through the brush.
Here, tap, tap, tap

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
through the bush. On the modern homestead, it\'s not
enough to provide your own food, fuel and shelter.

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
Unless you have an outside source of income,
you must have a reliable cash crop.

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
We get our running expenses out
of this bush, taxes and seed,

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
garden expenses, (inaudible)

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
couldn\'t buy a truck with it. In Vermont,
the Nearings produced maple syrup.

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
In Maine, they raise blueberries.

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
[sil.]

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
(inaudible) there, let me go and pick more.

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
Theoretically, they devote the afternoon
hours to their professional interests.

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
But with all the visitors and correspondence to attend
to, Helen finds less and less time for the violin.

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
It would take me three months of good
hard work at the fiddle to get back

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
where I once was. (inaudible) you can pick up.
In piano I think you can think (inaudible) piano

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
even if you aren\'t practicing.
But if you are a violinist…

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
I think Heifetz said that in
three days his audience knew

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
if he had not practiced, in two days his
accompanies know and if he hadn\'t practiced

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
one day, he knew it.

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
But every Sunday evening
is set aside for music,

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
and everyone in the community is welcome.
At the last Sunday night, Scott said,

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
why do we have – what did you call it? – a
(inaudible) music. Why can\'t we have something

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
of social significance? So
I have at his insistence

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
and suggestion prepared an
evening of music of protest.

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
And the first one is by

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
a little Vietnamese girl.

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
The song I\'m going to sing
is entitled \"The old man

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
and the child.\" This is a description
of the city of (inaudible)

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
in December of 1966,
after the crushing down

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
of a non-violent movement
for peace and democracy

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
by tanks and troops of the
(inaudible) government.

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
On Mondays, they hold
political discussions.

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
For as citizens of the world, the Nearings
feel it is their duty to speak out.

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
Affluence is not an end in itself. One
civilization after another has fallen apart,

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
which relied for its survival

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
on the accumulation of wealth
and power in the hands of

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
a relatively small minority
of the population.

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
You can\'t organize human society. You can\'t
have four billion people living on the planet

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
under these circumstances. You got
to work out a collective pattern.

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
You got to work out collective means.
You got to work out

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
collective objectives and you
have to train a generation

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
capable of dealing with these forces.
We see the stream of young people

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
coming and going. Now, by and large,

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
consider these people being somewhere
in Virginia or Oregon are rooted

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
instead of these people being looted.
They are rootless. They are drifting.

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
They are wandering. They are searching.
They are on the move.

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
Now, at some point something
is going to crystallize

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
this rootless stream, make them take root,

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
make them formulate policies,
make them chose leadership,

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
make them decide on… on the
formula that they want to follow

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
and make them move politically, which means
that they\'re trying to control public policy.

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
At some point, this is gonna happen. I
don\'t know at what point. In the meantime,

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
we\'re deciding what crops to harvest

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
on the… on the 14th - that\'s tomorrow -
on the 14th of November… of September,

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
we\'re deciding what crops to put in
the greenhouse during the two weeks

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
that lie immediately ahead. We\'re cutting our
wood for winter and putting it into the woodshed.

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
We\'re doing concrete things.

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:33.000
[sil.]

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
I have many doubts, many
doubts, no certainties,

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
many expectations and a lot of confidence

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
in the possibility during this lifespan

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
of making some kind of a contribution to
the expansion of our expanding universe.

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
Now, this… this contribution may
only consist in turning this brush

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
into top soil and adding
to the top soil here,

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
instead of standing this way and watching
the top soil run into the Penobscot Bay.

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
When we came here, there was no
garden there at all. It was just

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
a… a bank of witchgrass. And the neighbor
said, \"You\'ll never raise a garden

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
on that land, there\'s too much witchgrass.\" And there
were witchgrass roots almost as big as my little finger

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
and this long. And we looked
at it and began to work at it.

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
And at the present time you won\'t
find a real live witchgrass root

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
inside that garden wall. And if you want
to… if you want to have the fun of working

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
a weed-free garden, come
on in, the water is fine.

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:58.000
[sil.]

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
And at 93 and 74, Scott and Helen
are about to start all over again.

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
New garden will be

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
right out up here. All those trees will have
to be cut down and all the brush cut down.

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
We\'ll try a new system of gardening, the
way the Chinese and the Japanese do,

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
we\'ll make beds. It\'s rather swampy spot, but there are
advantages and disadvantages to a wet spot of garden,

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
so we\'ll make beds. Take out all
those (inaudible), all the brush

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
and start a new garden. And
that\'s nothing strange,

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
because when we left Vermont, we left beautiful gardens,
I think better gardens than we had here perhaps,

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
more extensive. We\'ll start
all over again up there,

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
we\'ll start all over again here. Maybe that\'ll
be enough for this life, I don\'t know.

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
There\'s always next life.

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
Scott has a story of a friend who
said, \"When I grow over, when I die,

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
give me one look at Jesus Christ and put me to
work.\" And I think when Scott gets over, he\'ll say,

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
\"I don\'t have to look at Jesus
Christ, just put me to work.\"

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
But I don\'t wanna look at Jesus Christ,
but I\'d love to have a little time

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
to look around before I get to work again.

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:28.000
[sil.]

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:35.000
[sil.]

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
CINE, the Council on International Non-Theatrical
Events, has awarded this film a Golden Eagle

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
in token of its excellence and has selected
it to represent the United States of America

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:30.000
in international motion
picture events abroad.