• Loving and Leaving the Good Life with Kate Braestrup

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    Loving and Leaving the Good Life. Helen Nearing's last full book, Loving and Leaving the Good Life (1992), insists that how we live and how we die are not separate questions. Kate Braestrup has spent her life walking alongside people in their hardest moments and arriving at something like the same conclusion. In this talk,...

    Free
  • Forest Farm’s National Historic Designation Celebration!

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    Join us for a special celebration, marking the The Good Life Center's designation on the National Historic Register of Historic Places. It will feature garden tours, food, music, and speaker: Noel Paul Stookey! Noel Paul Stookey is a musician, activist, and member of the legendary folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary — long engaged in...

    Free
  • Protect Ancient Forests

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    Alyssa & Michael O’Brien, co-founders of Protect Ancient Forests, make the case for working together to protect our remaining old-growth and mature public forests — why they’re irreplaceable, how policy shapes their fate, and what it looks like to build a movement on their behalf. Drawing on law, education, and deep roots in the Maine...

    Free
  • “Tending the Page” Writing Workshop

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    Good Life Center resident stewards Lucy and Jordan have led writing and poetry workshops for years. In this hands-on workshop for writers of all experience levels, participants will explore sensory writing with a focus on place and memory. Drawing inspiration from The Good Life Center’s gardens and from short excerpts by the Nearings and contemporary...

    Free
  • Mobile Commoning: How Sharing is Caring in a Climate Hope World

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    This talk considers the history of “commoning” as a way in which generations of people around the world and right here in Maine have resisted private property, settler colonialism, and enclosure by moving more lightly across places, from swamps and forests to urban edges and oceans. Can sharing energy, food, and transport help us achieve...

    Free
  • Backyard Composting 101

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    The Good Life Center Board will lead this hands on workshop that will cover the basics of the principles of composting as well as how to construct a well designed compost pile. Participants will learn about Scott Nearing’s composting strategies as well as how enhance the overall fertility of their garden with time tested composting...

    Free
  • Swordfish in Wabanaki Homeland

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    Archaeological sites along the Maine coast show that swordfish existed in the Gulf of Maine between approximately 5,500 and 3,700 years ago. Excavations at multiple Maine sites have produced swordfish rostra, vertebrae, and other remains, indicating that Wabanaki ancestors harvested and processed these large fish for millennia. In this presentation, Dr. Bonnie Newsom will discuss...

    Free
  • Going Against the Grain with a Legume!

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    In this talk, Sarah Speare, CEO and co-founder of Tootie’s Tempeh will share the story of how a food company stood up to nearly every norm in business to become best in its category.

    Free
  • How to Find Hidden History

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    Much of history has been buried by the passage of time. Join writer and history researcher Avery Yale Kamila who will go over Moral Treason, a paper she wrote for the Elizabeth Oakes Smith Society exploring 19th-century Maine author Oakes Smith's early work as an editor and involvement in the previously unknown Portland Female Anti-Matrimonial...

    Free
  • Deep Dive with the Bullfrog

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    Thousands of people have visited the Nearings' final homestead, at The Good Life Center, in Harborside, Maine, and many have seen the Bullfrog documentary film about their lives. At this gathering, Greg Joly will offer live commentary on the Nearings' homesteads, their life-ways, and the political and economic radicalism that undergirded everything they built.

    Free
  • The Influence of Helen and Scott Nearing: A 50-Year Journey

    The Good Life Center 372 Harborside Rd, Harborside, ME, United States

    In 1976, inspired by the ideas of Helen and Scott Nearing, Sherrie Lovler and Norm Lee began a back-to-the-land life in upstate New York. They later founded The Good Life Get-Together, a yearly summer gathering with workshops for those drawn to the back-to-the-land movement and published Homesteaders News magazine for over nine years. Helen and...

    Free