Arlene moved with her husband, Bob Lovelace, to Maine in the early 1980s. The couple quickly fell in love with the back-to-the-land lifestyle and continue to run their own homestead today. The link below provides an indexed, transcribed, and segmented version of Arlene Lovelace’s Oral History: Arlene Lovelace’s Oral History
The Story
Arlene did not intend to become a homesteader. Coming of age in the early 1980s, she went to Umass Amherst, where her suitemate was Bob Lovelace’s childhood neighbor. Bob visited some weekends, and eventually, he and Arlene began to date. When Bob bought the land in Brighton, ME, though, Arlene had no intention of following him. Laughing, she recalls thinking to herself: “Good for Bob that he’s doing this land thing. Cool. I’m really happy for him... that’s not what I’m doing! I’m going to go to California.”
She went up to visit him a couple of times in his small hunting cabin. Bob got to know the community around him. They warmly invited him to dinners and other gatherings. Many of them were back-to-the-landers — members of middle-upper class suburban society who decided to leave their office jobs and become farmers.
Although Arlene and Bob were slightly younger than the majority of back-to-the-landers, they grew up with newspapers plastered with news of government corruption, the Vietnam War, and the tumultuous Civil Rights movement. “We hadn’t consciously thought, “we’re moving back-to-the-land.” But when we met back-to-the-landers, we said, ‘Oh yeah, that’s what I want to do,’” Arlene says, recalling their decision to move to a homestead in Maine. Mostly, they liked the lifestyle — loved the idea of growing their own food, loved the vibrant community — so they slowly began to join in.
Over the next few decades, Bob and Arlene became close with a core group of five other monogamous couples. They became foster parents. Arlene became a certified world tour guide.
Today, Arlene works at Colby. She brings eggs from her chickens to seven or eight colleagues at Colby. Her and Bob continue to grow most of their own food. With a casual tone and twist of humor, Arlene describes life as a homesteader who did not take part as much in the sex, drugs, and partying aspects of the 1970s counterculture.