“My parents were suburban people with regular jobs in Glendale, California,” Donna Kausen says. “I didn’t have the American Dream. I had the pioneer dream, the homesteading kind of dream. I didn’t really want a career in anything.” In 1976, she graduated high school and hopped freight trains from California to Wyoming. Then she bought a car for fifty bucks and drove it to Maine. During her fifty years on the Maine coast, Donna has worked as a migrant apple picker, blueberry raker, sardine cannery worker, clam digger, scallop diver and, more recently, a sheep shearer. “Life is based around food,” she says. “It’s about growing and storing food. It’s the basis of a healthy life; you’re physically active and nourishing your body, mind and spirit. “After my husband died, our best friends moved in next door and now the three of us share the land. Pete tends to the hens and electric fence; Jerri and I do a lot of the gardening; my house is the main food storage and cooking and party house. We all work together on the wood. “In the summer, we use rain barrel water for dishes and bathing, and drinking water is from a well I dug. We do a lot of trading labor [with our neighbors]. Like, Bob, the guy up the road, if I need to borrow tools or put my car in a lift to work on the exhaust, we may swap for some food I grew. “I live the old-fashioned way [without electricity and refrigeration] with a hand-dug root cellar under the house. And when the food is starting to not look so good, I ferment it. Everything I know from working with local folks who have passed now—tying knots, learning the tides, planting my garden—came from the people who were here, twenty to forty years older than me. The people who have passed are still in the stories and lingo. We have their quotes and ways of thinking, too.” Donna’s newest endeavor? “I started running when I was sixty,” she says. “I’m happy if I’m moving.” #ToughbyNature #hempworkwear Photos: @gretarybus