Understanding that the constructs of the yurt are quite simple, you may quickly jump to think about the most basic of needs – How to go about the shit, shower, and shave routine.
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The things you do for Love
Ridiculous. That’s what I originally thought of the ‘pooch pouch‘ because I always had big dogs, and packing around little designer pocket dogs was just a little too ostentatious for this gal. But, here I am, the very proud and unbelievably happy owner of an 8-pound joyful pup we call Radar Love, whom we believe has never left the state of Florida.
Why a yurt?
One of the questions people often ask is why we chose to live in a yurt.
Inspiration
I can’t really say when it was I first discovered Doug Fine, but his story has been a major motivator for this adventure over the years. If you’ve never heard of his book Farewell, My Subaru, I encourage you to become acquainted, and hope you find the same comfort I did in knowing that we all have the power to make our lives what we wish them to be with a little creativity – and a lot of hard work.
Enjoy this short video of the Organic Cowboy’s transition to rural off-grid New Mexico while still enjoying the creature comforts of big city life:
Look out, Enchantment, here we come!!
(And, yes, we really did own a Subaru just like this one… Drove it all the way to FL from CO. Where is she now?)
The check is in the mail
Well we finally did it!! We decided to go with the Super Ger Yurt from Groovy Yurts, it will be delivered in June. We have an amazing amount of work ahead. Time to start liquidating the vast majority of our possessions from this materialistic life that we have grown accustomed to, it was great while it lasted but it’s time to get back in touch with our true selves!! We need to start working on plans for our deck that the Yurt will go on. Then we need to build the platform that will go under the Yurt on the deck. Other things that need to be done include getting the plans ready to build an outhouse, find a good stove that we can use to stay warm, figure out how we will have internet connectivity as our workplace is being awesome and giving us the opportunity to work remotely, plus many more things that I am sure will pop up as this transition continues to take shape!! Feel free to leave your suggestions, thoughts and advice below!!
@Groovyyurts Check is in the mail! Can’t wait to meet the truck in June with our new home!! pic.twitter.com/I3nhlW23My
— BeamingToYou (@BeamingToYou) February 12, 2016
Introduction
Without visiting in person before making an offer, we discovered the listing for this little gem on the back road to ABQ from Chama.
Criteria met: ≤$1000/acre, Borders National Forest, No HOA or Deed Restrictions. Well, let’s call the realtor and talk about it. Really? That’s all you want for it? Well, winter is coming and we won’t be able to make it out to visit the property so let’s hold off. Maybe not, maybe we can mitigate our risk by giving a lower offer. If he really is ready to sell now he will understand that we aren’t going to pay the full asking price without seeing it. Success!! Property purchased, hopefully this doesn’t backfire on us in a bad bad way.
Wow, just wow our expectations are exceeded. Several miles up an unmaintained road, bordered on one side by national forest and the property on the other three sides are owned by someone that just comes up for a few days each summer, and he was really a nice guy. I think this will work, let’s start planning to get the hell out of Florida!!
Shopping…
We did a bunch of shopping from Florida and had a few good places picked out in the Chama area that we wanted to look at. Unfortunately, you just never know what your gonna get from an online ad. We looked at a few places one piece of property that was pretty flat, had decent irrigation, about 20 acres but it just didn’t suit our fancy. It was open view all around and there were houses on all sides of the border, so even though it was 20 acres there was no privacy. We also looked at a beautiful piece of land that was 5 acres but it was a total cereal bowl—all steep declines leading to a huge open bowl area in the bottom. Well where do you live in this scenario—either on the side of a steep incline or in a flood zone. We really wanted to pull the trigger on that piece of property, thankfully we had a close family member there to talk some sense into us, THANKS TERRY!!. As frustrated as we were that nothing was working out for us, passing on this piece of property was the smartest decision we had made to this point and taught us a valuable lesson. This is the rest of our lives we are talking about, let’s not be hasty!! Time to go back to Florida. Lucky for us we decided to take the back roads back to the airport and just happened to see a bunch of signs for a realtor that we had not talked to yet.
Beautiful view from 5 acres in Chama, but it’s all downhill…
The Crash
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/lehman-brothers-collapse.asp
I guess we aren’t going anywhere now. While we weren’t upside down in our house, we felt lucky to have decent jobs, food on the table and we were surrounded by foreclosures. We may be better off than the majority at this point, but we certainly couldn’t afford to move. Well, Florida aint so bad let’s hang out a couple years and then head back to the mountains!!
On the hunt…
Time to get serious about finding some property and getting back to the mountains!! We have both always enjoyed Northern New Mexico and it is certainly cheaper than Colorado. We identified a few pieces of property that we wanted to look at, but also just wanted to explore the area to see what else we could find. The goal at this point is to find something at less than $1000/per acre and to be off the grid as much as possible. One of the pieces of land we wanted to look at was 280 acres just north of Tres Piedras, while it was nice it was certainly just a dream for us as there was no way we could afford that big of a piece of land. Alright, Florida’s still growing on us. We don’t want to rush it though and make a bad decision—let’s just stay in Florida, certainly we will find something that fits our requirements before too long!!
On the way to look at the 280 acres on the west side of the gorge…
West Meets East
First truck (all the way from CO), first house, in the same shot… Worlds collide. 🙂 No doubt young love was in full bloom! Florida is beautiful, let’s buy this house with all the fruit trees in the yard, get married on the beach, hang out for a couple of years and then head back to the mountains. The best laid plans right……I mean who woulda thunk a couple of mountain kids would own a house with Fruit trees in the yard, certainly not us!!
