Laurel Nest Yurts

Beautiful foods prepared with alternative methods and native edible foods...

On a small farm, a “harvest party” can sometimes eat into the market share too much… what do you do if you’re a foodie on a budget?  Jason Young says, our guest blogger, says “go forage!” Below is a meal he sent me from his Harvest Party, and it sounds scrumptious.  Hopefully you can go forage in your backyard and have an “un-harvest” party…

Lamb’s Quarter

Lamb's Quarter Quiche, yum!

Edible weeds play perfectly into the hands of health-conscious foodies on a budget. Often, there is nothing at all inferior about culinary weeds. Their “opportunistic” nature as deeply-rooted pioneer plants make them able to tap much deeper into the soil than many other garden plants, making these highly nutritious, maybe medicinal, and often delicious! Why harvest only what you planted?

Lamb’s Quarter Quiche: Luckily on our farm, Willow’s Bend, a 3-year old three-acre sustainable micro-farm, one such edible weed, Lamb’s Quarter, was allowed to consume our compost pile, growing to have a good foot even on me. Chock full of tender tips with a flavor and nutrition rivaling spinach, Lamb’s Quarter (raw or cooked), works well as the perfect centerpiece for my party. 8 cups of it reduced nicely in the skillet, and this late in July, it also seemed to be much more forgiving than most weeds I’ve tried in terms of bitterness. The quiche gave me a chance to show off our new beautiful blue Ameraucana chicken eggs!

Ameraucana & Plymouth Rock Barred Chickies laid the eggs for the quiche

Jerusalem Artichokes/ Sunchokes One of the most intriguing alterna-food finds I stumbled upon this summer was with the “Jerusalem Artichokes,” more formerly called “Sunchokes.” My first encounter with Alisa’s beloved Jerusalem artichokes begged a little forgiveness on their part and hers (I unwittingly attacked them with a machete on a weed-slaying rampage). She later explained them to me as a native and hardy species of sunflowers, where I later read about their edible potato/ginger-like tubers being nutritious and nutty in flavor (they store just like potatoes too). Unfortunately, these were understandably stunted, but we harvested a couple handfuls to try raw or roasted on the fire.

Wassail & Cinnamon Roasted Apples Who said drinking had to be wholly unhealthy? Wassail, the caroler’s classic of old made a beautiful and nutritious “jungle juice” tasting quite a bit like warm apple cider. This concoction is just perfect for incorporating the tart flavor of Alisa’s untended wormy cooking apples. The good slices of ten small apples were baked in tinfoil packets with cinnamon on the bonfire and added to our drink, along with quality orange and apple juice, spices…etc. and spiked hard with a handle of vodka.

Jason picks leaves for the tea party...

Wild lavender makes a great summertime drink.

Blackberry & Lemon leaf tea/ Lavender and Vanilla sun tea
For added quirkiness, I made a few varieties of Sunteas in Alisa’s old economy wine bottles set ontop of the hot well house. The Blackberry leaves and Lavender were wildly abundant and easy to harvest. Because random google searches is what I do, I discovered blackberry leaves are in fact not only edible, but high in Vitamin C, and are said to be medicinal to women for menstrual pains. My guests and the internet agreed: it really did resemble green tea in every way. The lavender tea I made for kicks, mostly to dump on my body in the shower if nothing else. In all I had set four wine bottles of teas on the table outside, and to my gaping horror the next morning almost all of it was gone!

Our glass windows offer a beautiful alternative to fabric windows.

Our glass window option utilizes a Low-E thermal glass window for maximum energy efficiency, and can be easily accessorized for a personalized look.  The most  tangible benefit of the glass windows is that they can be opened from inside.  When we build the window frame, we eliminate the lattice that crisscrosses through the standard yurt window and give you a beautiful view open view through the window. 

Real Windows can be added to your standard yurt package, or you can easily build them yourself...

The glass new window system can be installed virtually anywhere along the wall of any of our yurts, and can be ordered with a new yurt package or you can build one yourself, and add it to your own custom yurt project.

*For people with chemical sensitivities, glass windows offer a wonderful option for building a yurt with completely natural materials.

Hal and I attended the Mills River Community meeting today. We live out in a beautiful mountainous town sandwiched between Asheville, Brevard, and Hendersonville. Many of the people have been here for generations, and hold a strong mountain spirituality and offered us some good southern hospitaity.
One of the local organic farmers made a presentation about organic food and the importance of eating organic. An older woman in the group asked him, why should we eat organic? Why is it so much more expensive then the other stuff at Ingles? It’s interesting, because I’m a bit of a “die hard” organic; I try to eat everything local and organic. We believe in gardening and CSAs… and I think our daughter Emilia is helathier for it, growing up primarily vegetarian.
So… why organic? There’s so many reasons, but one thing to think about, is that buying organic, and spending your money within your local economy is one way of voting everyday. Organic and sustainable food is a hot topic now, and what we eat is turning into a bold political statement.
Food is vital as we rethink our way of life. Many of the dilemmas we face—how to reconcile city and country, man and nature, prosperity and sustainability—can be addressed through food. Food is the common denominator: the one thing without which we can’t survive. Carolyn Steel, the author of “Hungry City” introduces a new word, “sitopia,” from the Greek terms sitos (“food”) and topos (“place”) to introduce a new model. What follows is some excerpts from an extremely inspiring radio talk she gave a few months ago. “We already live in a sitopia of sorts, since the cities, landscapes and ecosystems we inhabit have been profoundly shaped by food. The problem is, our blindness to food’s influence has created a bad sitopia; one so bad, in fact, that it threatens to destroy itself—and us—if we don’t change it. So we must create a good sitopia, one that restores balance to our lives, to society and to our relationship with the natural world.
How might that work? First, we need to understand that sitopia is not utopia. We’re not trying to create an ideal world, but a way of thinking that allows us to create many different places, connections and relationships, using food as our tool.
Much of the mess we’re in is due to lack of respect for food. To create a good sitopia, then, we must restore to food its true value. This isn’t just a question of how much we pay for food, although that matters, but of what we understand it to represent. Ask a starving man what food means to him, and he’ll give you a frank answer. Food remains the most important shared element in all our lives.
The moment we restore food’s proper value, we begin to see where it belongs—not at the periphery of society, but at its heart. For example, “cheap food”—the apparent triumph of modern agribusiness—is an oxymoron, an illusion created by externalizing food’s true costs. Once you factor in all the fossil fuel consumption, rainforest destruction, soil erosion, pollution, water depletion, carbon emissions, loss of biodiversity, rural depopulation, animal suffering and obesity that result from cheap food, it doesn’t look quite so cheap. In fact, we pay a very high price.
When such externalities are taken into account, the debate about how to feed the world shifts.

Let's bring reverance for food and plants back into our lives...

The pursuit of ever more “efficient” food systems is revealed as profoundly uneconomic. The false choices of industrial versus organic, high tech versus traditional, also disappear, replaced by an open debate about the farming practices and food systems that best match our aspirations for the future of the planet. Such thinking represents a reversal of the current trend, which treats food as a necessary yet somehow separate problem. In the ongoing food debate, the most vital question of all—What is a good life?—is rarely asked.
Of course, that question has no single answer; instead, it generates a spectrum of further questions. Being open to asking these questions, and realizing that there will be many different answers, is key to creating sitopia. Even if we can’t say for sure what a good life might be, we can describe some of its attributes. Most of us, for instance, would agree a good life is one in which people are generally happy, healthy, industrious, generous and loving; societies are tolerant, peaceable and sustainable; physical surroundings are diverse, bountiful and beautiful.
We know such a place can’t exist; that would be utopia. But that’s where sitopia comes in. Sitopia is contingent, partial, practical. It can be big or small, shared or personal. It can take many shapes and forms. It can be created by anybody, right here, right now. It can exist anywhere. Indeed, it already does.
To see sitopia in action, go to a place where food is highly valued—such as India. Food is everywhere in India.

Food is everywhere in India...

The countryside is densely populated with more than half a million small farms. Close networks of villages trade with one another at busy food markets. In the cities, people cook and eat on the sidewalks; vendors sell snacks from carts and stands; and traders carry baskets of vegetables on their heads. Cows, goats and chickens wander freely, and even the temples are brimming with sweets, left as gifts for the gods.
Perhaps most impressive of all is the tiffin box culture of Mumbai. Thousands of Mumbai housewives cook hot lunches for their husbands. The lunches are packed into stacked metal containers (tiffin boxes) and collected by some 5,000 couriers, or dabbawalas, who use bicycles and trains to deliver up to 200,000 meals a day all over the city. The service is one of the most reliable in the world; a recent survey found that just one in every 6 million deliveries goes astray.

Shared meals are a major part of our sitopia...

In India, food is powerfully embedded in the broader culture. But some aspects of Indian food are more difficult to swallow. Poor infrastructure means that food worth an estimated $10 billion is lost each year, while nearly half of young children are underweight.
Yet how much better are things in the U.S.? More Americans live on food stamps than do people anywhere else in the world, while 50 percent of all food—worth $136 billion—is thrown away each year. In India, meals remain at the heart of family life; 19 percent of American meals are eaten in cars. Agriculture employs half of the Indian population; in America, that figure is less than 1 percent. In India, one in 20 is obese; in America, one in three.
Such comparisons merely demonstrate the effects of two contrasting food cultures in two very different nations, one developed, the other developing. But that’s precisely the point. When you consider the social benefits and drawbacks of food systems worldwide, you’re forced to conclude that the former belong mostly to traditional food cultures and the latter chiefly to industrial ones. A country like India could certainly benefit from some modern technological and infrastructural improvements, but not at the expense of its traditional food culture. Food in India is still about sociability, connectivity, identity, seasonality, family, craftsmanship, love. The developed world could do with a dash of those ingredients, too.
High-tech industrial farming isn’t the only way to feed the world. Comparative studies of alternative approaches, such as organic or permaculture, tend to focus on short-term metrics, like crop yields. But the number of tons of grain produced per acre per year is much easier to measure than happiness, the feeling of the wind on your skin or the satisfaction of following in your grandfather’s and father’s footsteps. The tacit assumption that nobody in his or her right mind could possibly choose farming over a desk job is clearly false, too, as hundreds of highly educated farmers in America and Europe can testify.

Let's put food first!

So the essential task of sitopia is to put food first. The quickest and easiest way to become a sitopian is to change the way you eat. Perhaps you’re already a self-sufficient vegan who cooks everything from scratch and composts all your leftovers. In spite of your good intentions, such an approach would not necessarily create a society in which most of us would want to live. Growing your own food might bring a sense of personal achievement, but if we all did it, we’d have to abandon cities altogether, so we’d lose all our sociability. Coming together to exchange food and other goods was, after all, what created cities in the first place.
Understanding food’s influence, and using it positively and collectively to guide our actions, is the key to sitopia. This can take many forms, including cooking more for our kids, eating less industrially produced meat, buying from local markets, joining Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) projects, composting our food waste, refusing to buy unsustainably sourced fish or joining movements such as Slow Food and Transition Towns.
Whatever form you choose, remember that what you’re doing isn’t just about food. It’s about deciding, together, what sort of world we want to live in—and using food to get us closer to it.”

For the whole speech, http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/health-headlines/2011/2/17/carolyn-steel-a-new-food-manifesto.html

“Hey, would you guys ever consider an advanced workshop on stuff like how you power and plumb the yurts in your community? I know covering everything would be too much.I’d be more than satisfied with just knowing how you guys are making it all work. I am about ready to start on my yurt (finally!) and the thing that I am hung up with is off-grid power generation, where to find a composting toilet affordably, etc. , and how t do the nuts and bolts stuff of getting the yurt turned into a complete living space.”

We get requests from our customers to help them with all aspects of yurt living, so I thought I’d take a minute to answer this request more thoroughly in this blog.

So… just to answer some of these questions, I’ll give you a little food for thought, and then I promise I will do some research and give some more in-depth answers…  but to start with some basics, we have some suggestions for low-impact living that can make your life much more comfortable.

• Going to the bathroom

We suggest using compost toilets for your yurt.  There are several brands you can explore, and you may make choices based on their cost, size, and other qualities.  Some people choose to dig big holes and use the old-fashioned outhouses.  This is a fun option, but check local codes, as they may not be permitted.  We usually suggest doing a good bit of research on this, and ordering directly from the company.

The carousel compost toilet

At our home, we have two types of compost toilets.  One is the Biolet compost toilet  (see http://www.biolet.com/products/) which is good for a few people in a space that gets climate controlled all year. We like this toilet, and the people at this company are very helpful and nice. The Biolet works optimally when the temperature is 65 or warmer, so you wouldn’t want this toilet if you don’t heat the space all the time in the winter.  There are other top brands, including Sun-Mar, Envirolet, Ecotech.  I love the Ecotech Carousel model, which is a large capacity toilet and has 4 chambers that you rotate.  This means the matter stays in the toilet for longer and when you remove it, it is ready to go.  It’s pretty amazing and from what I can tell this is a wonderful company. They will even give you plans to make your own toilet (which is really aligned with how we do things, so I love this!!) I have not used this toilet, but the ideas sound excellent to me.  It’s on my wish list… http://www.ecological-engineering.com/carousel.html Our other toilet runs on the same principle, but instead of 4 chambers, we use a barrel and when it’s full we put it in the sun to cook for a year.

• Plumbing with a gray-water system (not black water!)

Any wash water that has been used in the home, except water from toilets, is called gray water. Dish, shower, sink, and laundry water comprise 50-80% of residential “waste” water.  It’s a waste to irrigate with great quantities of drinking water when plants thrive on used water containing small bits of compost. Unlike a lot of ecological stopgap measures, grey water reuse is a part of the fundamental solution to many ecological problems and will probably remain essentially unchanged in the distant future.

The US Green Building Council, the City of Santa Barbara, CA, Oregon ReCode, and SLO Green Build are among those organizations which independently chose greywater standards as the technology with which to launch their programs of regulatory reform.  In practice, greywater legality is virtually never an issue for residential retrofit systems—everyone just bootlegs them. However, grey water legality is almost always an issue for permitted new construction and remodeling, unless you’re in a visionary state such as Arizona, New Mexico, Texas (and soon, NV, MT, OR, and CA).  Find out about local codes, and do it responsibly.  But, try to create a system for the most efficient water usage and you will truly have a low-impact lifestyle.  This website is a great start for more information: http://www.oasisdesign.net/greywater/index.htm

• Off- grid power generation ideas

There is lots of ways to generate power.  Some people choose to apply for a temporary power pole, so that while they’re building another structure they can access this electricity source.  This is often an inexpensive interim solution, so you can get settled in your yurt and then later explore which off-grid power choice is the best.  Some options include: solar, wind, water, and a bicycle generator.

My favorite is the bicycle generator, which is basically a bicycle stand that allows you to power a battery that will then power low-watt devices.  One company that offers a ready made is  Pedal-a-Watt.  The average rider will produce between 125 and 300 watts using the Pedal-a-Watt.  While this may not seem like much power, many pieces of equipment draw very little power and can be powered for long spans of time with small amounts of power.  For example, a laptop only draws 70 watts so one 20 minute workout could run the laptop for over an hour.  This is ideal when you don’t have a lot of things running electricity- maybe a light, cell phone, laptop, small music player…  http://www.econvergence.net/electro.htm

Solar power is an option if you have lots of sun.

DIY solar kit from Sundance Solar

We live in the middle of the woods, and so this is not really an option for us. Our local company is Sundance Solar and they are an awesome company.  If you are considering solar, I urge you to look into their webpage, store.sundancesolar.com/ They have DIY solar kits available that are very affordable and also offer a wealth of resources.  Wind, or turbine energy is another great option, although if the wind doesn’t blow, the turbine stays still and the electricity isn’t generated. Wind turbines also have moving parts, which means more things that require maintenance and have the possibility of failure. But if you’ve got a good consistent stiff breeze blowing through the back yard, you can harvest its energy for years to come.  A last option, if you have a stream in your backyard, is  microhydro electricity.  It’s produced from the energy in water flowing from a high level to a lower level that turns a turbine at the bottom end of the system. Microhydro electricity generation can be the most cost effective of the three, according to Energy Alternatives Ltd., “Our experience with micro hydro systems has demonstrated that water power will produce between 10 and 100 times more power than PV or wind for the same capital investment.” If your source is good, it runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, providing lots of off-grid energy for a long, long time; because it produces so much more consistent energy, fewer batteries are needed to store the energy because there is less (or zero) time that the system isn’t harvesting energy.

I’ll do a little research on these systems, and write another specific blog about each one… look for more to come.

• Staying warm and cool through the seasons

We have a whole section of our FAQ that deals with this, so check it out!!  Let u know if you have more questions, and I’ll get to them! I’ll be updating our FAQ with this info, so stay posted!  http://www.laurelnestyurts.com/heating-and-cooling-a-yurt

I can’t describe to you my favorite ritual of living in WNC with enough elation, the fun hunt for the morel.  Those of you have been morel hunting, know how challenging it is to find these obscure mushrooms, and how gratifying it is when you find them!  Not to speak of the orgasmic feeling of eating them, after Hal has lightly fried them in some good butter… (mouth is watering, thinking of today’s portion…)  For those of you who have not had this joy, I strongly urge you to pick up Michale Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I would have to say this is one of my top favorite books, and every time I recommend it, I feel like I’m up for a re-read.  He has a chapter in there about foraging for a meal, and it includes these incredible morel mushrooms, and the best information I’ve ever read about them. 

So, in a nutshell, what is this amazing book about?  It’s premise it mainly responding to our daily question, “What should we have for dinner?” Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves? The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.

To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance. 

If you decide to pick up this book, you’ll never look at food the same (especially convenience store food…) much love and thanks Michael for the compelling read!

p.s.  some commentary was copied form Pollan’s sight, they said it better than I would! http://michaelpollan.com/books/the-omnivores-dilemma/

Karma yoga (Sanskrit: कर्म योग), or the “discipline of action” is a form of yoga based on the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Sanskrit scripture. Of the four paths to realization, karma yoga is the science of achieving perfection in action.  In a nutshell, Karma Yoga is the spiritual discipline of selfless action. 

The word karma is derived from the Sanskrit kri, meaning ‘to do’. In its most basic sense karma simply means action, and yoga translates to union. Thus karma yoga literally translates to the path of union through action. However, in Vedantic philosophy the word karma means both action and the effects of such action. Karma yoga is described as a way of acting, thinking and willing by which one orients oneself toward realization by acting in accordance with one’s duty (dharma) without consideration of personal self-centered desires, likes or dislikes. One acts without being attached to the fruits of one’s deeds.  A major facet of karma is the work one does, and the attitude with which he goes about his duty. To work for selfish reasons, such as to be able to afford luxuries such as convertible cars and swimming pools, is bad karma, especially when one craves these possessions to gain stature in society. Actions such as materialism restrain one from furthering their place in life and from attaining an honest satisfaction with spiritual growth. There is not a single way to practice good karma. If, for example, one acts with selfless and true compassion toward another, good is bound to come of his action.

A few weeks ago, I drove to town for a yoga class.  Our budget was really tight, and I felt like the $15 class was such a splurge! When I got to class, Sierra reminded me that her classes are always $5 if we’re struggling, and $15 when we can.  “It’s Karma Yoga!”  What a gift…

A few weeks later, I took my daughter out to my favorite cafe in town, Kathmandu Cafe, and we had the most lovely Himalayan buffet lunch.  I filled out the check, and then remembered Sierra’s words about Karma Yoga and bumped the tip up several dollars.  I felt lighter in my heart, and had an incredibly beautiful day.  That afternoon, on an impulse, we got to make a belly cast of a girlfriend’s pregnant belly.  Three days later, I watched her son June born into this world.

I can’t tell you the abundance of generosity I’ve been surrounded by since that small act at the Kathmandu Cafe.  We received muffins at a discount the next day, gifts from strangers on the street, and today a dream of mine is continuing to manifest.  The world is full of abundance, and if we open ourselves to it, and share the abundance in our life, we continue the cycle.

During these times, we are surrounded by opportunities to help, and growing amounts of tragedies each day that need prayer, action, and service.  In each moment is an opportunity to take action, this is the gift of the present…

Members of the Yurt Industry Join Hands!

The beautiful breakfast spread at the conference...

Hal just got back from the 2nd Annual Yurtmaker’s Conference in Hawaii, where he spent a week with other yurt manufacturer’s and various other people in the industry.  He had a great time making connections with the owners of the other yurt companies and also had the opportunity to share his ideas and potential solutions about a variety of issues pertinent in the industry.

The people who attended included Blue Ridge Yurts, Colorado Yurt Company, Yurts of Hawaii, Becky Kemery, Hearthworks and Ellisport Engineering.  Hal really enjoyed making connections with the other yurt manufacturers, Dan and Emma of Colorado Yurts and Kathy and Sharon of Blue Ridge Yurts.  It was nice to see the different yurt designs and learn from companies that have been in the industry for 30+ years!

The entrance to the "Hawaiian Retreat"

Some of the issues they touched upon were:

• They met with an insurance representative who started the process of developing a specific set of guidelines for insuring yurts.
• They discussed permitting of yurts and the need for all the manufacturers to come together as an industry to write  codes and regulations that are specific to yurts.
  
• Fabric options were explored and shared.
  
• Insulation options and testing of insulation was a common goal for all the yurt manufacturers so that an accurate comparative r-value can be determined.
• NAYA, the North American Yurt Alliance was formed.  More information and links to the website,  in a blog coming soon!
• They met with a extreme weather engineer and learned about the many severe weather conditions that may create a potential failure and also learned ways to increase the strength of a yurt.

Hawaiian Yellow ginger! Yum!

On Saturday of the conference they had a traditional Hawaiian Luau, complete with a panel discussion on yurts. Becky Kemery, author of “Yurts, Living in the Round” did a slide show.  Tara Weightman, from Hearthworks in England, also did a presentation, on traditional steam bent frame yurts from Kyrgyzstan,  and was Hal’s roommate!  Check out the Hearthworks website, http://www.hearthworks.co.uk.

When Hal came back, he brought me a ton of yellow ginger and we have been making a wonderful ginger drink.  The ginger in Hawaii is yellow, and is sweeter than the more typical white ginger.  Thanks to Melissa of Yurts of Hawaii for planning such a wonderful conference!  And thanks to Elvira and Hughes (biker dude) from the “Your Hawaiian Retreat”, http://yourhawaiianretreat.org/ for being such amazing hosts! The daily fruit-filled breakfast makes me drool with envy!

Yoga for Kids is such a gift for us all!

2011 has been so magical, so far. I’ve become more serious about my personal yoga practice, waking up at 4 am for Sadhana is now part of my life.  I get to experience the joy of teaching yoga to children at my daughter’s school.  My experience is renewed and deepened through teaching, and I feel grateful for the gift of sharing the yoga with the children.

Yoga at an early age encourages self-esteem and body awareness in a setting that’s noncompetitive.  Children thrive with yoga, and as we get deeper into our classes, I am seeing these benefits come to life. Yoga enhances their flexibility, strength, coordination, and body awareness while increasing their concentration and sense of calmness.

Focus on the breath enhances concentration...

Our daily relaxation improves, as well as their confidence. Doing yoga, children exercise, play, connect more deeply with their inner self, and develop an intimate relationship with the natural world that surrounds them. Yoga brings that marvelous inner light that all children have to the surface.

When yogis developed the asanas many thousands of years ago, they still lived close to the natural world and used animals and plants for inspiration—the sting of a scorpion, the grace of a swan, the grounded stature of a tree. When children imitate the movements and sounds of nature, they have a chance to get inside another being and imagine taking on its qualities. When they assume the pose of the lion (Simhasana) for example, they experience not only the power and behavior of the lion, but also their own sense of power. The physical movements introduce kids to yoga’s true meaning: union, expression, and honor for oneself and one’s part in the web of life.

In tree pose, we anchor ourselves deeply...

I hope our shared yoga lays the foundation for a lifelong practice that will continue to deepen.  The greatest challenge with children is to hold their attention long enough to teach them the benefits of yoga: stillness, balance, flexibility, focus, peace, grace, connection, health, and well-being.  The children love playing the roles animals, trees, flowers, warriors.  When they’re snakes (Bhujangasana), we imagine that they’re just a long spine with no arms and legs.   In Tree Pose (Vrksasana), we imagine being a giant oak, with roots growing out of the bottoms of their feet. Could you stay in the same position for 100 years?

When they stretch like a dog, balance like a flamingo, breathe like a bunny, or stand strong and tall like a tree, they are making a connection between the macrocosm of their environment and the microcosm of their bodies. The importance of reverence for all life and the principle of interdependence becomes apparent. Children begin to understand that we are all made of the same “stuff.” We’re just in different forms.

Thank you to Mountain Sun Community School and the glorious children who are sharing this experience with me! I look forward to the many more to come!

Thanks Mountain Sun for the opportunity to teach these wonderful children!!

For more information about yoga classes, feel free to email me at info@laurelnest.com.

For more information on Mountain Sun Community School, check out their facebook page or go their website,

We stop and "monkey around" the yurt...

We just had a successful yurt building workshop weekend.  Our goal for the weekend: build a yurt frame and sew the cover.  The participants in the workshop were able to see all parts of the yurt building and left the weekend prepared to build!

“The workshop was very hands-on.  Hal and Charlie were super nice and helpful and inclusive.  I love how ideas were shared and suggestions taken.”

Our agenda for the weekend was pretty lofty, with our participants going through the entire process of building the yurt.  In the woodshop, they made a rafter, assembled khanna, and assembled and finished the ring.  The ring they worked on is the ring that they will use when they put up their yurt!

“I loved the hands-on options. Thanks for the background, so that personal modifications [to the yurts] can be made… I would recommend this workshop to others!”

Sewing the yurt cover at our workshop...

In the sewing studio, we taught how to make windows, assembled the walls, and cut sewed an entire roof!  Some of the participants helped with the sewing, and our new demo yurt is truly a collaborative effort!

“I got to learn, then actually build many parts of the yurt in 1 day! I recommend this workshop to others!”

All yurt workshop participants assembled and finished their roof ring."

We had some other positive feedback, and testimonials, and they are below… thanks to everybody who made the workshop a success!

‎”I don’t know where I could find a better value in a sustainable shelter or a more helpful group of people to facilitate my dream of building my own yurt, then at Laurel Nest Yurts.”

“The workshop was awesome! people had a great time and learned a lot..no matter what level of know-how they came in with. There were people who already knew a lot, and people like me who were total beginners, and everyone was comfortable and got a chance to learn. Thanks Hal, Charlie, Asia and everyone for a great weekend!”

We will plan to have another workshop sometime this spring… we’ll keep you posted.  Possibly for this workshop, we’ll have it over three days, starting on Friday afternoon, and going to Sunday…. hope to see you there!

A few weeks ago, we shared that we made some major design changes in our yurts.  In two weeks, we’ll be holding our first yurt building workshop of the year, and making our book available.  We are ready to share all the information we have for building high quality yurts and sewing the covers.

The new ring design comes in 36" for smaller yurts and 48" for larger yurts!

What are the major differences in our new design? And why did we change our design when we have such positive feedback?

Even with such happy customers, we still want to improve our designs and make our yurts the finest available. The best benefit to the new design is a larger ring, and thus larger skylight dome.  The 12′, 15′, and 18′ yurts now have 36″ skylights; and the 20′, 24′, and 30′ yurts all have 48″ skylight domes.  That’s a beautiful view for stargazing nights…

Our new design allows our customers to order their own domes!

Our new ring design accomplishes a few practical things, most importantly it improves the strength of the yurt while at the same time making it easier to build.  This is great news to our Do It Yourself builders, as it is now easier to make your own yurt frame.  The new design allows us to use 2×4s instead of specially ordered 5/4 boards.  This makes the yurts stronger, and easier to build.  Our process and the DIY builders are now simplified, as clear boards are much easier to find in a variety of woods, when purchased in more mainstream sizes.

For more information on building your own yurt, come to a workshop!

Our new rafters are much easier to build, stronger, and just as attractive.  You’ll spend less time on the rafter, and there is still no need to special order any parts.

Our new dome opening kit is much simpler, and does not require any special adjustments to the dome.  This means that customers can order the domes directly from the manufacturer, and can easily install the domes themselves.  Even better, the dome lift kit is more water tight, stronger, and less visible when you look up through skylight dome.

The best news for those of you who are not Do It Yourself builders?  Our old designs will be available at discounted prices, while they last. We have some parts in stock that we will be making into yurt packages, and selling at discount.  Our current project is finishing five 12′ yurts, which we’ll sell as a group, hopefully to a campground, at a discount. These yurts will also be sold individually.  The benefits of a 12′ yurt are numerous, especially these smaller yurts can be built in most places without a building permit (often building codes refer to structures 12′ in diameter and larger… our 12′ yurt is just slightly under 12′ large)….  

Thanks for tuning in, and hopefully we’ll see some of you at our workshop in the next few weeks.