Early Yurt Exposure

During the 70's. my son Jon started working @ an Afghan rug store. Taymor would show me rugs that had just come in & if there was still sand in it ~ he said that that made it so he could sell it for more :~) . So to promote his rugs, Taymor imported a Traditional Afghan Yurt. It was beautiful !! This yurt had an Embossed Felt Cover with a hand carved door. On the inside Taymor had outfitted it with all the adornments that Genghis Khan would have enjoyed ~ there were rugs. camel saddle bags, hand carved tables, Afghan pillow, & silver tea service. I stepped out of that Yurt & said to my partner ~ "I want a Yurt" ~
Well as karma would have it ~ 1st I was to venture more into the life as a nomadic Gypsy Hippie ~ yes we took off form south central Tennessee from on The Farm, where we had live earlier with a newly purchased Amish buggy that we had made to be an enclosed camper. We also purchased a new grey dappled Percheron/Standardbred horse from the Amish, named Tony (the Amish name their horses English names). I had already been working in Atlanta as a for hire carriage driver in the tourist trade, so we took off from Tn. back to Atlanta. Of the 2 places we lived in Atlanta with our horse, both were still zoned as for ~ Horses & other farm animals~ so we live right in Atlanta in an hippie area called Little 5 Points & worked the carriage business a bit more. Then we took off back to Tn. where my partner worked for a month as an Artist in Residence in Chattanooga School while living @ a stable & she rented a car to go to work. After the job ended we took off west out of Tn. crossing Alabama in a SW direction ( winter was nipping @ our heels ) ~ then crossing into Mississippi & on down to my Grandmother's home.
Lots of stories ~but that is a whole other story. Will relate just one story ~ when we got to my late 90's year old Grandmother's ~ my uncle said to her that it was really something that we had come in a horse & buggy, but she just looked @ him & said ~ "No that is how I got here".
With this nomadic gypsy adventure over ~ & many of my friends knowing of my interest in the Nomadic life style ~ someone dropped of a set of plans for building a Yurt !!! Holding onto them for several years & then having a place ( a huge barn ) to build the Yurt ~ that is how things got started.
Below I am including pics of a Traditional Yurt or Ger & the front cover of the plans & intoduction page of the plans I started with. Enjoy for there is more on the way.

Yurt Life

(So this was an attempt to connect to someone else who was living in Yurts ~ but my email to Info@AroundtheYurt.com came back ~ so here I start off with a short letter telling a bit about myself.~)

Rob ~ i ran across your website quite by accident.  Was interested in finding others who are & have been living in Yurts & written about their enxperiences.  My interest comes from the fact that i have been living in Yurts for over 20 years now.  I got hooked after seeing an traditional Afghan Yurt back in th 80's.  Then after traveling by horse & wagon around the SE US, & feeling the nomadic life, someone turned me on to a set of plans. From those plans i made myself a Yurt. My step-daughters asked my wife if we were ever going to move back inside the house ~ answer was NO.  I packed up my Yurt & went to a Pagan Festival & someone else wanted one ~ so started NomadicArts Yurts. I made several Yurts & realized that I either needed to get investors & really get into the business or (What I chose) I moved to the backwoods of West Virginia.  But before that move I traveled some with my Yurt ~ setting up for a time in 2 other states.  In W. V. it was a 45minute walk into where my Yurt was set up by a small stream & a very old hand dug well.  Though this was very beautiful, by this time of my life I had remarried & had another small step-daughter.  This isolation was great with my wife & I, but there where no other children for miles.  So packing up again, we moved outside of Athens, Oh (a college town with lots of homeschoolers) we still live there now in a 16' & 20' yurts connected to a kitchen & studio.  However, with my last step-daughter now grown, we plan on packing up again in the spring & returning to WV, to the same land we were on before.  From this land we can go & come with almost no ties, because we are set to travel even farther a-field.  We will be spending time in SE Asia since my wife is Thai & from there exploring Asia ~ which will probable lead me to the Steps of Asia ~ I want to wander this part of the world  horse.
     Okay after this long intro ~ why I found you was looking for others writing of their actual experiences living full time in a Yurt.  I would be very interested in any articles or information or connections you have in relation to this.
James (cricket) Massey

Sent from my iPad