my yurt farm

.... currently exists only in my imagination. So I thought I'd ramble about it a bit here.

My friends are getting a little tired of hearing about plans for my yurt farm. I won't actually be growing yurts, so "farm" isn't technically accurate. It's just fun to say, "yurt farm."

Try it.

I want to live in a yurt because of its minimal impact on the land. Depending on the style of yurt you choose to construct -- and the level of permanence you desire in your structure -- a yurt has no permanent foundation. It sits on top of the land, rather than being anchored down into it. This was part of the original design, of course, as it makes for easy portability. These are the tents of the Mongolian nomads, after all.

I don't have plans to move my house around much, but it's still nice to know about.

Most people "upsize" when they move from one home to another. I find myself doing the opposite. I bought my first home in 1997. It was a very nice Cape Cod style, built of brick and stone in 1936 (that's considered a "brand new" house in my family). 1500+ square feet, which was way more than I needed, even with the critters running about. These days, I'm in an 1100-sq.ft. condo.

I'm amazed by how much stuff Westerners have a tendency to amass, and we keep going after larger and larger homes to hold it all. I seem to be going in the opposite direction, needing and wanting less and less as I grow older. My sister describes me as "crunchy," which I suppose is the equivalent of "New Age, Generation-X hippie."

I like the idea of solar panels and composting toilets, which I imagine could be worked into a yurt. Setting up house without disturbing or destroying trees that were living there first. Rain barrels, cisterns, and rain gardens. Worm bins -- I already have some of these, that I constructed out of sterilite containers.

My friend, Terri, laughed at me this morning over tea as I talked about windmills and water turbines.

"And I could put my home office up in a tree house!" I was on a roll.

Terri got a funny look on her face. "You and the other six-year-olds will have a lot of fun with that."

I'd also prefer to be driving a biodiesel car -- actually, a biodiesel hybrid -- but that's another discussion. Remind me sometime to get on the subject of fold-up bikes.

[Honestly, it's a travesty that it costs more to be environmentally responsible -- or at least to consciously move in that direction -- than it does to go with the current flow of global depletion and devastation. At least, this is the short-term financial reality.]

I'd originally been looking at more of a cob-geodesic combination for a home, but cob construction doesn't always do particularly well here in the Pacific NorthWET. I'm slowly learning more about yurts, and occasionally keeping an eye out for appropriate land parcels. In the meantime, I continue to live as "green" as I can in my little condo -- which also has no permanent foundation, but was brilliantly built (30 years ago) on a wetland, and is now sinking.... and cannot be moved.

Yurt dwellers of the world, unite! Or, at the very least, shoot me an e-mail and tell me more about your home.