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.