I finally got over my fears and made this quick video of my Blue Ridge Yurt raising from last fall. Enjoy!
Category: The Simple Life
building the yurt deck – adapting to the unexpected
The yurt deck wasn’t at all what I envisioned, but it was perfect.
what i do in between bursts of progress on my yurt life
Building what I need to live on my land feels glacially slow. But I’m not idle in between those big bursts of progress. Here’s what I do to support my future yurt life.
designing my future kitchen and bath building
The homesite was cleared. The driveway was excavated. The tractor road was improved. It was time to get my barn.
erosion mitigation: the price of procrastination
It was late summer of 2019, and it had been months since I’d made the 2.5 hour drive from my parents’ house, where I’d been living, to Joyous Gard. My work schedule had complicated things, and — frankly — I was at a loss as to how to prioritize the mountain of work I needed…
learning to ask for help
(hint: it wasn’t an easy lesson) One of the scariest — and most frustrating — parts of this journey I’m on is that I’m essentially walking it alone. I’m divorced, with no children, and I have no life partner to help me plan, make mistakes with me, allow me to lean on him when I’m…
mountain men cracking themselves up
Mid-September 2018 “You know…they make good saws, too.” Darrell punctuated his assessment of Sam’s Stihl chainsaw by spitting on the ground, a smirk playing about the left corner of his mouth. Sam lowered the saw he’d been trying to start and shot mock daggers at Darrell from under the brim of his baseball cap before…
inroads: construction (and destruction)
Late August, 2018 “You know I’m going to cry the first time I see all these trees down,” I told Sam, the man I’d hired to excavate my land. He chewed his lower lip a little, glancing sideways at me from under the brim of his baseball cap. “I’ll get over it,” I continued, “but…
the perc test that launched a thousand dreams
slow beginnings The thing delaying all the other things related to living on my newly-purchased mountain land was the road. The thing delaying the road was finding an excavator. I’d spent most of the winter months trying to get a road guy — any road guy — to answer or return my calls to no avail….
collecting soil samples on my mountain land
Wherever I go, I grow things. Flowers. Ferns. Hostas. Berries. Vegetables. Whatever the soil will take and hold. It’s my gift: to myself, to my neighborhood, to the land. I learn the land by putting my hands in the soil. I pick out and collect the stones. I wrap my fingers around the roots. I…
the unhurried path 