![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
via http://ift.tt/1P8kAcv:
YURT! Not my usual quality of photos, these were mostly taken very hastily on my phone as i tried to direct setup. I’ll take proper camera pictures once I have some more time. I’m sorry, this is long, and photo posts don’t let you insert a read-more. :(
Friday I left work slightly early so I could get to the yurt-maker’s house before dark, and there, in the slight drizzle, he spent about an hour taking down the ger (as it’s more properly called, I guess; yurt is a slightly-offensive foreign word if you’re Mongolian, and so the sorts of people who appreciate Correct Terminology prefer to call them ‘gers’, so I try to respect that but most local people know what a yurt is and not what a ger is so it’s more locally-useful to call it a yurt, so I mostly do. Not to be offensive to those who prefer correctness, but it’s hard enough to explain what I’m doing, but I do understand there’s an element of cultural appropriation here and I am sorry for that.)
Anyway, he took down the ger and showed me all the parts, explained what was important and what was only important over the long-term and what was critical to adjust correctly and what was only cosmetic and could be changed according to preference. So, above, the hands taking apart part of the door frame are his; I took some reference photos of how he tied things in case the knots were important, as neither of us knew what the knots were called.
It fit into my car, though some of that was because I am very, very experienced at loading this car in particular– my old Impreza had precisely the same proportions inside, so I know exactly how far the seat goes up and so on. So a couple times, I knew things would fit without further disassembly if I just wiggled things around.
I managed to get the entire yurt, plus a duffel bag, my camera bag, three pairs of boots, assorted small items, a sleeping bag and a pillow and an industrial coffeemaker salvaged from work into my car. I declined to bring any of my copious amounts of awesome glam-camping gear (I’ve done Pennsic for years, people, I have everything from outdoor carpets to hanging lanterns to collapsible storage chests that double as seats) or any of my great cold-weather gear due to a combination of space concerns and just plain absent-mindedness. (I didn’t bring long underwear or even a winter hat!)
So Dad and I got a platform built, out of scavenged timbers from the fallen barn on my sister’s farm, and some plywood Dad had, and some scraps, and then everybody got home from the farmer’s market and we came out and set up.
The issue we had was that the platform was built to be a 12′x12′ square and the yurt was… bigger than that. I feel like a 12′ diameter circle should fit pretty nicely on a 12′ square but it Did Not. So we had to… squish it, and tighten the bands down correspondingly, which you can do to an extent– it makes the roof a little higher, you just have to stay within a certain angle for the roof rafters so they don’t pop out– and it then made everything a little bit wonky from there on out. So today I have to find some more timber and shim out the platform to be a little bigger, wiggle the whole thing around to see if i can get it to settle better, and then try to tighten up the canvas everywhere. I also had bought rolls of radiant-barrier bubble insulation that I didn’t bother fussing with when I had all these people standing around waiting for me to tell them what to do, so I’ll put that on.
As soon as we got the thing all the way up, one of my sister’s cats came and investigated, including going inside it. Another of her cats came and there was some mutual stalking going on (they aren’t enemies, but they’re not soulmates either), including a romp through Dad’s Jeep and over its roof. We persuaded the shy, claustrophobic family dog that it was okay to come inside, and there was much wagging.
And then the child came, and had to be talked into going inside (I think she thought there was some kind of trick), but then she had to play hide-and-seek in it, which at her age is mostly going and standing in a spot and waiting for someone to feign surprise.
At some point during this process she filled her diaper, so my ger is officially a home now, having been pooped-in. Relatedly, the farm’s interns (the two farm-hands are interns who are paid a stipend and given room and board and their labor is structured to a curriculum designed to teach them organic farming) have been working on building projects, since a large part of farming is building things and working with tools. One of them has been constructing an outhouse, to hold a composting toilet to serve the fields and greenhouses– and my yurt. So that’s going up soon, close but not stinky-close to me, and I’m very pleased.
Anyway. That’s my yurt story so far.
YURT! Not my usual quality of photos, these were mostly taken very hastily on my phone as i tried to direct setup. I’ll take proper camera pictures once I have some more time. I’m sorry, this is long, and photo posts don’t let you insert a read-more. :(
Friday I left work slightly early so I could get to the yurt-maker’s house before dark, and there, in the slight drizzle, he spent about an hour taking down the ger (as it’s more properly called, I guess; yurt is a slightly-offensive foreign word if you’re Mongolian, and so the sorts of people who appreciate Correct Terminology prefer to call them ‘gers’, so I try to respect that but most local people know what a yurt is and not what a ger is so it’s more locally-useful to call it a yurt, so I mostly do. Not to be offensive to those who prefer correctness, but it’s hard enough to explain what I’m doing, but I do understand there’s an element of cultural appropriation here and I am sorry for that.)
Anyway, he took down the ger and showed me all the parts, explained what was important and what was only important over the long-term and what was critical to adjust correctly and what was only cosmetic and could be changed according to preference. So, above, the hands taking apart part of the door frame are his; I took some reference photos of how he tied things in case the knots were important, as neither of us knew what the knots were called.
It fit into my car, though some of that was because I am very, very experienced at loading this car in particular– my old Impreza had precisely the same proportions inside, so I know exactly how far the seat goes up and so on. So a couple times, I knew things would fit without further disassembly if I just wiggled things around.
I managed to get the entire yurt, plus a duffel bag, my camera bag, three pairs of boots, assorted small items, a sleeping bag and a pillow and an industrial coffeemaker salvaged from work into my car. I declined to bring any of my copious amounts of awesome glam-camping gear (I’ve done Pennsic for years, people, I have everything from outdoor carpets to hanging lanterns to collapsible storage chests that double as seats) or any of my great cold-weather gear due to a combination of space concerns and just plain absent-mindedness. (I didn’t bring long underwear or even a winter hat!)
So Dad and I got a platform built, out of scavenged timbers from the fallen barn on my sister’s farm, and some plywood Dad had, and some scraps, and then everybody got home from the farmer’s market and we came out and set up.
The issue we had was that the platform was built to be a 12′x12′ square and the yurt was… bigger than that. I feel like a 12′ diameter circle should fit pretty nicely on a 12′ square but it Did Not. So we had to… squish it, and tighten the bands down correspondingly, which you can do to an extent– it makes the roof a little higher, you just have to stay within a certain angle for the roof rafters so they don’t pop out– and it then made everything a little bit wonky from there on out. So today I have to find some more timber and shim out the platform to be a little bigger, wiggle the whole thing around to see if i can get it to settle better, and then try to tighten up the canvas everywhere. I also had bought rolls of radiant-barrier bubble insulation that I didn’t bother fussing with when I had all these people standing around waiting for me to tell them what to do, so I’ll put that on.
As soon as we got the thing all the way up, one of my sister’s cats came and investigated, including going inside it. Another of her cats came and there was some mutual stalking going on (they aren’t enemies, but they’re not soulmates either), including a romp through Dad’s Jeep and over its roof. We persuaded the shy, claustrophobic family dog that it was okay to come inside, and there was much wagging.
And then the child came, and had to be talked into going inside (I think she thought there was some kind of trick), but then she had to play hide-and-seek in it, which at her age is mostly going and standing in a spot and waiting for someone to feign surprise.
At some point during this process she filled her diaper, so my ger is officially a home now, having been pooped-in. Relatedly, the farm’s interns (the two farm-hands are interns who are paid a stipend and given room and board and their labor is structured to a curriculum designed to teach them organic farming) have been working on building projects, since a large part of farming is building things and working with tools. One of them has been constructing an outhouse, to hold a composting toilet to serve the fields and greenhouses– and my yurt. So that’s going up soon, close but not stinky-close to me, and I’m very pleased.
Anyway. That’s my yurt story so far.
