We have the land.
We have a house we are selling.
Our next step is to move all our
stuff and us over TO the land and build our home.
Although we love to camp, and in
recent history here in Texas, we could lay out all of our stuff in the
naked meadow after June 1st without fear of a raindrop touching
it before October, some sort of shelter seems prudent.
*This article is not about LIVING
in a Ger (yurt), but about the choosing, research and shopping end of the
process. The assemblage and living part will be another story…
Unless you have found a place with
a home already on it (my last two homesteads have been one of these), or
have a lot of money lying idle and can afford to build your new house
while living in your old house (I’ve heard some people can actually do
this, although no one in my social circle can claim such high finance),
you’ll be faced with the dilemma of where to live in the ‘between time’.
Mainstream Americans put most of
their stuff in storage and either rent a place for the 6-8 months it takes
for their builder to put up their house, or buy a little mobile home and
set it out yonder while the builder does his thing then have it hauled off
when they are done. A few daring folks will live in a camper, and a few
will move in with relatives.
None of these options are open to
us because:
-No one in their right mind would
rent to someone with over 100 critters
-Mobile homes come equipped with
things like appliances and kitchen counters - things we are bringing with
us and it would be redundant to put ours in storage while paying for
theirs
-We don’t have access to a camper,
plus, with our health issues and the time it will take to build our
permanent house, more room and comfort will be necessary to keep a
semblance of sanity
-We really want to maintain good
relations with our relations. This requires a respectful distance at all
times.
And our plans are to build our
permanent house. Not “hire a builder, choose a plan and pick out
colors and faucets” kind of building. More of a “design it out on graph
paper, accumulate the supplies, learn and assemble as we go” sort of
building. So our timeline is a little different. My conservative
estimate is five years from start to finish - paying as we go.
Granted, life may get in the way of this plan and cause it to be amended,
but that’s the plan today, and we’re sticking to it.
After hearing “So what’re ya’ll
gonna do? Live in a tent?” for the thousandth time from friends and
acquaintances, Ward looked at me and said, “You know, I’ve always thought
yurts were neat”.
Thus began “YurtQuest”.
(Adding being very aware that we
are, in fact, sitting front row/center of Tornado Alley, we will not be
moving into our yurt without first having in place a storm shelter. We may
be eccentric, but we ain’t crazy)
Yurts are the traditional homes of
nomadic tribes who make their livelihood following their flocks across a
forbidding landscape. A yurt is designed to be a permanent, movable
home, which only sounds contradictory. The original yurts (Mongolian
Gers) are assembled from local materials (saplings, cotton cloth and lots
and lots of felted wool) and have been fine tuned over the last 3,000
years or so to be cool in the hot summer sun, warm in the frigid winters,
as well as stay upright and strong through the flat line winds coming from
the steppes.
Here in the US, yurts have been
adjusted, updated and built large scale by three companies: Pacific Yurts
(http://www.yurts.com/what/default.aspx),
Ranier (http://www.rainieryurts.com/),
and Colorado Yurts (http://www.coloradoyurt.com/).
All three come recommended by
actual American yurt-dwellers as having quality products and very good, to
excellent, customer service.
After looking at all three sites,
and using the handy (and fun) price quote estimators, I called both Ranier
and Pacific, whose friendly sales staff sent out informative packets.
The packet from Pacific was more in-depth and flashy, so being a creature
drawn to such things, and the fact that their yurts priced out as less
expensive, I’ve been working with and talking to Scott at Pacific to get
the Yurt of Our Dreams.
The yurts built by one of the
above companies are sleek, clean-lined, and beautiful in simplicity -
unlikely, yet wonderful, crosses of “Girl Scout Sleepover Camp Platform
Tent” and “Yuppie Renovated Warehouse on the River Loft”. They use state
of the art materials to ensure a non-leaking, comfortable, very livable
space that is as strong as something made mainly of cloth can be.
I was happy. I had a plan.
I knew what I was doing.
Then my friend Dawn skipped in and
ruined it all.
