Helen nearing biography

She grew up in an economically comfortable family of Theosophists and was a lifelong vegetarian.
This is the first comprehensive biography of Helen Knothe Nearing (1904-1995).
The woman that inspired a resurgence in basic homesteading among a small slice of the American population: Helen Nearing.

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About Nick

She never ate a hamburger, never took an aspirin, and never used a credit card. For most of her adult life, she had no telephone, radio or television.

Helen Nearing (1904-1995) was the life partner of Scott Nearing, and together they set the standard for self-sufficiency and simple living. When I wrote about Scott’s influence on my life in a previous blog post, I didn’t give Helen her due. She was a remarkable person in her own right.

Helen Nearing was an author, farmer, carpenter, house designer, violinist, stone mason, and a gracious host to people seeking wisdom and life direction by visiting her and Scott. In her life, she showed that you can always do more than you think you can.

“The value of doing something does not lie in the ease or difficulty, the probability or improbability of its achievement, but in the vision, the plan, the determination and the perseverance, the effort and the struggle which goes into the project,” she wrote. “Life is enriched by aspiration and effort, rather than by acquisition and accumulation.”

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Nearing, Helen Knothe

(1904-1995) was a self-sufficient organic farmer and author whose life with her husband, Scott Nearing, struck a powerful chord with thousands of people. Later labeled the “back-to-the-land movement,” generations of people, some disenfranchised by McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, and the greed of modern society, adopted new values exemplified by the Nearings and others. These included values such as life in harmony with nature, simplicity, organic farming, and houses unconnected to power grids.

Helen Knothe was born in 1904 in New Jersey. Her family provided a stable, intellectually stimulating, Theosophical* home. Helen grew up eating vegetarian food, a trait that would bring her and Scott together. She studied the violin vigorously, and was an accomplished musician. Her lifelong plan to continue the violin through college was interrupted by her encounter and subsequent relationship with an emerging cultural and religious leader, an Indian man named Jiddu Krishnamurti. Helen spent several years in contact with him before they went their separate w

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Nearing, Helen (1904–1995)

American author and pioneer of simple living who is regarded as a "great-grandparent" of the American back-to-the-land movement and a major personality of modern environmentalism. Born Helen Knothe in Ridgewood, New Jersey (some sources indicate New York, New York), on February 23, 1904; died in an automobile accident near her home in Harborside, Maine, on September 17, 1995; daughter of Frank Knothe and Maria Obreen Knothe; sister of Alice Knothe; married Scott Nearing (1883–1983), in December 1947; no children.

In 1932, Helen Nearing and her husband Scott Nearing abandoned New York City and "a dying acquisitive culture" for a Vermont homestead. Through hard work and simple living, they became 75% self-sufficient. In the early 1950s, when she was in her late 40s and he was over 70, they started from scratch once more, on a small farm in Maine. Of the Nearings' many books, Living the Good Life (1954) became a virtual bible of homesteaders starting out in the late 1960s and was much admired, if not always emulated, by counterculture youth. By the