Finding the yurt…

I’m looking for a yurt, and its not cuz I’ve gone all hippy-dippy, its because a yurt is a damn good tent structure. Years ago, when I did my version of moving back to the land, I lived in a small yurt for over a year with my young son. It was quite the hobbit home, sod roof and all – the outhouse was up a sweet little path along the side of the hill. An old waterbed was just off the deck and I’d sit up there sloshing around as I read to my son. Oh, I’ve got some pleasant memories of yurts.
Now I am looking for a guest space or perhaps a “community” space for a group of tenters and I thought of the yurt again. Relatively inexpensive, easily movable, elegant and comfortable – this seems to cover it with the yurt. The internet offers any number of configurations on the yurt, even including varying construction techniques. American yurts are really only the distant cousins of the Mongolian yurts. Yurts in the United States are more engineered, use higher tech materials, take longer to put up and are not intended to be moved often. My search took me to a number of websites – each was interesting in their own way -
www.coloradoyurt.com/yurts/index.php This was the first place we looked. We decided that we liked their tipis quite a bit. They make a pretty yurt and their prices are competitive, but they are a long way away and I wanted to get a break on shipping somehow… so I kept looking…www.livabletent.com/ This was a very useful website. Seems like someone had already done this looking around stuff before and here was a list of what they found. I visited several.  - www.atuktents.com/ This is where I would go if I wanted to get a yurt that was closer, traditionally, to the original Ger of Mongolia (“yurt” was the word for the imprint that the Ger made on the ground after it was taken down). From their website, they seem genuine. - www.exclusivetents.com/ Very, very cool canvas structures – elegant. Way expensive. And in Belize. Damn! - www.soulpad.com/ Another very cool, natural looking adaption of the yurt. They wouldn’t ship to California. I was seriously thinking of buying one (price was competitive) until I found out. At this point I got intrigued by all the canvas tents I was seeing and I thought maybe a yurt was too fancy. So, I took a look at a Reliable tent over at www.outfitterwarehouse.com. This was a great big canvas tent with a smoke hole – and dirt cheap. And, for my purposes, dead ugly. You can find alot of canvas tents out there, so not everyone thinks they are ugly. About this time I was ready for a break and I went on over to www.interstellarmarines.com/ to check what I heard was a very cool game promo. I’m a Myst kind of gamer and I like my graphics very crisp. This one looks promising. I have a slow country connection so on-line gaming can be a challenge. Anyway… Still no yurt. I had seen some ads for tent stoves and I thought I should check prices. Well, my favorite stove is a Jotel, but they are like $700 pricey and I wasn’t ready for that. Perhaps something more akin to the “Tin Wonder” that I have seen around.  - www.kni-co.com/ These folks offer several “Sheepherder” stoves meant for tenting with pack animals. Very clean lines. Not a $75 cheapie, but also not a Jotel. The prices ranged from $200 to $400. Worth a visit. I may buy one of these. - www.fourdog.com Wow! You will get heat and cooking out of this one. Their five dog stove runs for $310. Even boils water. I don’t care about cooking and the firebox looks too small, but I want one. - www.tentipi.com/ Looking at the stoves, got me thinking of how I admire Swedish craftsmanship and, just for the hell of it, I visited Tentipi. Real interesting tent – but very far away. Not surprisingly, they also offer stove – Hekla fire boxes and Finnmark fireplaces. After all this searching around, I remembered a friend who had described a yurt he had seen. He had mumbled something about Pacific Yurts(www.yurts.com/). The name sounded familiar. I was pleased to find that they had a very attractive 20 foot yurt and an excellent reputation. I could pick the yurt materials up myself at their factory and save myself the shipping. Their staff has been very helpful. My new yurt is shipping to me as I write.

Milewide website remake

Take a look at our Milewide Nursery website revision. Just uploaded the change in the beginning of March. Basically, got it down to just about one page. Dropped Paypal (as I recommend you do) since they started politically picking and choosing whose account they would honor and I have set up Google Checkout instead. Picked two of our favorite nursery products to offer – japanese maples and artichoke seeds. We are going to get back to website design and expand the site as soon as we can find the time. We have a great many more plants we would like to offer. I do the web design myself and between the nursery, the homestead and a little time off, I just can’t make things happen as quickly as I would like. Let us know what you think of the basic design – we are trying to make it clear cut and modern. Thanks.
steve

Spring Planting Fever

Every Spring, or almost Spring, and that means as soon as I can have any reason to start my seeds, I prep trays of six packs with Black Gold soil mix and start popping seeds into their little holes. I planted a bunch a couple of weeks ago and I planted some last week – now I got cole seedlings pushing right up – cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage. Don’t you love cauliflower? I mean, I really like cauliflower! And I was pretty well prepped for that first seed more than a month ago when I ordered my new seeds – this year I used Johnny’s Seeds, but Territorial Seeds and Peaceful Valley Supply are a couple of other sources I have used heavily. But, look around, and see what you can find. One year I wanted to go all Italian and all purple and I did find a Italian seed supplier that gave me a beautiful purple garden. I just can’t remember their name. You know, I always feel like I am taking a chance when I plant my seeds – fresh seeds seldom will fail you – but, somehow, I just feel this sense of adventure. I started ‘em; and when I harvest ‘em, all that good food will be my doing. I just don’t trust corporate food – they don’t care about me, but just about making a buck. I know that my family is getting good, clean food if I grow it.

I had virgin oak savanna meadow soil last year and since then I have tilled my garden rows several times. I added lots of compost too. This fall I planted a fava bean cover crop down each row and before the beans podded up, I cut them down in place. Legumes like fava fix nitrogen and create a substanial root mass – both these things help to prep my soil. Its actually very cool; you can see little balls of nitrogen attached to the roots if you pull a plant up. I plan to use hoops (concrete wire) and plastic on my beds to give things an extra start (and to protect them against the crows). I will use hoops up behind my house as well. My home is built into a hillside so that the flat roof lines up with the ground and the hill behind has been terraced. I have turned two of the terraces into vegetable beds. That’s where I plan to put my first covered lettuce.

And, now, its raining so hard that I can’t plant anything.