John Seymour

John Seymour 1914-2004

Here is an excerpt from the book "The Self-Sufficient Life and How to Live It" By John Seymour.


"Work- I once knew an old lady who lived by herself in the Golfen Valley of England. She was one of the happiest people I have met. She described to me all the work she and her mother used to do when she was a child..."It all sounds like a lot of hard work," I said to here. "Yes, but nobody ever told us then." she said. "Told you what?" "Told us there was anything wrong with work!" Today, "work" has become a dirty word, and most people would do anything to get out of it. To say an invention is labor-saving is the highest praise, but it never seems to occur to anyone that the work might have been enjoyable. I have plowed all day behind a good set of horses and been sad when the day came to an end! This book is about changing the way we live, and I am aware that the subject is fraught with difficulties. The young couple who have mortgaged themselves to buy a house, or are struggling with personal loans and credit card debts, are in no position to be very choosy about what work they do. But why get into such a situation. Why labor to enrich the banks? There is not necessarily anything wrong with doing things that are profitable. It is when "profit" becomes the dominant motive that the cycle of disaster begins.

In my work with self-sufficiency I have met hundreds of people in many countries and four continents who have withdrawn themselves from conventional work in big cities and moved to the country. Almost all of them have found good honest and useful ways of making a living. Some are fairly well off with regard to money; others are poor in that regard, but they are all rich in the things that really matter. They are the people of the future. If they are not in debt, they are happy men and women."

The first step in living an urban or country life of self sufficiency is to remove debt from your life. It isn't easy. Debt in our society has become the norm. Most people cannot even imagine living without it. Debt is a hard habit to break and takes dedication and self-control to end the cycle. I chose to follow the Dave Ramsey plan because it is simple and will work for anyone no matter what their income is. As Dave explains it (in my words): sometimes your shovel is big or small (the shovel is your income), everyone's hole is different sizes (the hole is your amount of debt). As long as you are not making the hole any larger and you are shoveling as much as you can into the hole, you will fill it up and get out of debt. It is possible. His web site and radio show is encouraging because you get to hear the stories of other people who have beat debt. (see my fav links)

Here is the link to John Seymour's school in Ireland.
Smallholding School for Self Sufficiency