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  • From: Clansgian AT wmconnect.com
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Tvo
  • Date: Tue, 10 May 2005 10:36:02 EDT

This past year another homesteader passed out of this life, someone about
Tvo's age and like him someone who had done everything, knew everything, and
lived larger than life. John Seymour died on his Irish homestead attended by
his
daughter. He is the author of "Fat of the Land" and a score of other
self-sufficiency books. He was controversal and colorful having been
arrested five
years ago (at the age of 85) for leading a raid to destroy a Monsanto sugar
beet
field. At his trial he pleaded that it was his duty defend his adopted
country against all invaders. The judge found him guilty and fined him one
pound.

At this stage of my homesteading life I no longer so much need advice on
power tools or hardware or water systems. What I've cast my eye about to
find are
examples of fully embracing the homesteading way of life completely and to
the end. Alas, the published examples are few. I have a stack of
"homestead"
books where the person decided after a few years that homesteading really
wasn't something to give themselves to as a way of life and their story is
written
in retrospect including the day they locked the door and left the homestead.
The stories and examples I want to examine are the ones where someone else
has
to write the final chapter. Seymour's was just such a story. Tvo's is
another.

My understanding is that Tvo lived his last days on his homestead having done
what he could do to prepare that way for those of his family to live that way
after him if they so chose. Looking back over Tvo's many posts I find that
theme running strongly through what he had to say. He did not spend his time
complaining or excusing himself, although he certainly had cause to. He
chose
anonymity over self-pity. So this is how the homesteader, the self-reliant
spirit, passes. Well done.

The psychologist Eric Erikson examined the human personality and came to view
it as developing in eight steps over the lifetime of an individual. As an
infant, says Erikson, the individual develops a sense of trust or mistrust,
as
toddler a sense of autonomy or doubt, and so through his life: industry or
isolation, identity or confusion, intimacy or isolation. Finally as an adult
the
person develops a sense of generativity or self-absorption. The generative
stage of life is when one has children, contributes to the material world,
and
in the overflowing ability to create and produce, gives of themselves to the
world at large.

Then when the person has navigated his way successfully through the first
seven stages, he reaches the stage of integrity (vs despair), much as the
apostle
said "I have fought the fight, I have kept the faith." It is at this stage
that the person has credible wisdom. The last part of Tvo's life was the
very
living example of Erikson's stage of integrity and is the rare example of
with
it is like to live the independent life to the end. Well done.




James




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