Lessons from those who have gone before us

By fortunate chance Juliana ran into our midwife's apprentice, Connie, and discovered that she and her partner Matt have been on a similar journey to our own. They have been living in a 30' yurt, off the grid, for a while now and invited us to come over earlier tonight. They have done a lot of work on their own and now have a warm cozy yurt to call home. They have made good use of re-used furnishings, fallen timber, and even brought new life to an old wood burning stove after refurbishing it. Matt built a loft area for their bedroom using cedar branches he found on their property as posts and also erected a beautiful center support made from a trimmed cedar trunk. They plan to build a larger sustainable home in the future and are also in a constant process of digesting green living information.

From our visit I learned that we will really only need 36 rafter supports rather than the 60 called for in several of the plans I have looked at. This is good news for me since I am expecting the rafters to be some of the more difficult or pricey material pieces to come by. We also got to see a well thought out and simple shower/toilet system. I am relatively certain that we will not be worrying about building an additional outhouse structure and will be using a composting toilet instead.

The visit was exciting for us both. We left feeling energized and with many new ideas swimming through our heads.