Our Urban Homestead

When we moved into our first home in 2009 we, mainly The Chief, started ripping out all of the bushes in the front and backyard to make way for raised beds for gardening space. Some people grow shrubs in their front yard we grow tomatoes, corn, squash, eggplant, lettuce, etc.

Here is the front yard our first summer in this house.

Eggplant

 Lettuce

 Lettuce with Marigolds

Cabbage with tomatoes in the back

 Tomatoes growing up bamboo poles.

We were inspired by a family out in California, the Dervaes, here is a link to their urban homestead Path to Freedom. They grew tons, literally TONS as in pounds, of food on their tiny piece of property.  We thought this was great! 

Here is a picture of their urban homestead. 

We have been very interested in the quality of our food for a long time. The Chief is a previous all natural Pro Bodybuilder so due to his nutritional requirements we had been paying attention to our food and the quality of our food for a very long time.

Our first Summer in our home we also grew as a family. 

The second summer at our house looked like this. We had a mini garden monkey. 

She sure loved to play in the dirt, and she still does! 

As our family continued to grow, we had our little boy in March of 2012, we really loved the idea of having our children be a part of the process of growing our own food. Our kids love the dirt and love to help us plant our garden every year.

Our children have given us more of a reason to change the way we live. We want to show our kids not only how to grow their own food but show them where food really comes from.  

This is just the beginning of our story. I have yet to tell you about carrying chickens in pet carriers or towel drying chickens in freezing weather, in the dark, while it is raining, or the funny looks you get when you are driving around town with a duck in your lap. 

The adventure continues......

Why Purple Yurt Chick?

What is a Purple Yurt Chick?

I know it may sound like I am some kind of hippy that lives in a purple yurt  in a commune somewhere but, in reality I am a stay at home mom of two. When I was signing up for our blog I wanted it to have a catchy name that was off the wall and a little silly. You know, something that makes people stop and ask "What is this about?". Everything I could think of was already taken so I kept on brainstorming.

Then I looked at my kids and this is how it happened.

My little girl's favorite color is purple, my son, is just starting to talk and one of his favorite words is chick, and The Chief and I are always talking about our yurt so Purple Yurt Chick was born

I guess I could have used Yurt Purple Chick or Chick Yurt Purple or Yurt Chick Purple but I thought Purple Yurt Chick sounded the best.

There you have it, the not so glamorous story behind Purple Yurt Chick. It is just three random words that came together to tell our family's story.

The reason my son so fondly talks about chicks is because we usually have some hatching.

This is our first batch of chicks hatching.

                     

                    Newborns.

Once they are a week or two old they get moved to the garage in our homemade brooder. 

Next time I will tell you more about our aspirations of becoming farmers!

The Adventure Begins!

First order of business -  The Count no longer wants to be referred to as The Count so he will now be known as The Chief.

  OK. Back to the story. So I found the yurt on craigslist and I sent an email asking about it. I was relieved when they said they still had it, but then again how many people shop for yurts on craigslist? Anyway, I was relieved and excited to hear that we could come take a look at it later that week.When my father said we could put a yurt on his property I started having sleepless nights thinking about how we could start our farm. I know I was thinking of raw goat cheese, fresh eggs, a huge garden, my kids being able to run outside, etc. I was too excited to actually sleep.

We drove up on a Friday to see it and we went back and bought it on Sunday. I know you are thinking we made a hasty decision and we may have, but how else were we going to make our dreams come true if we didn't take a leap of faith.

When we got our yurt home we unloaded it off the truck and put it in our garage, so our future home is now inside our current home. I don't know of too many people that can say that! It's a good thing that I am use to being the weird one, because I know people are going to think we are crazy.

Before we could set they yurt up we first had to clean out and clean out and demolish my grandparents old home.

Here is a picture of the before.

Here are some pictures along the way.

Here is The Chief starting to bring down the house. 

The house is down and now the cleanup begins.

This is where we are today!

We have had a great sense of accomplishment in getting all of this work done. The best part was having our children with us to see us work together towards a common goal. We think it is important for our kids to see us work for our family. One day they will appreciate everything we have done to live a different kind of life. 

No children were hurt or in danger during the tear down/clean up. We kept them in the baby prison while we did all of the demo.

Hope you have enjoyed seeing how we brought down the house.  

Next time I will explain why I chose Purple Yurt Chick.  

Bye bye for now!!

What is a Yurt?

You may be asking "What is a Yurt?" Here is the definition according to dictionary.com.


Yurt
nouna tentlike dwelling of the Mongol and Turkic peoples of central Asia,consisting of a 
cylindrical wall of poles in a lattice arrangement with aconical roof of poles, both covered in felt and skins.

                                      (Here is a picture of the kind of yurt that we have, but this one is not ours.)  

More specifically our yurt is from Pacific Yurts. It is a wooden framework covered with a vinyl roof and sidewalls. Yes it does have insulation, yes we will have indoor plumbing, and yes you can have air conditioning in it as well. It is really a shell that you can do what you want with the inside. A blank canvas if you will. 

In the future we would eventually like to purchase land of our own, and the great part of a yurt is that we can pick it up and move it with us. One of our goals is to be debt free and this is one way that we can accomplish that goal. Right now we pay a huge chunk of our budget for a big house that we only use part of, and the bank owns more of the house than we do. 

When I really got to thinking about how much of our house we really use it was surprising to me. We mainly use the kitchen (where I spend a good chunk of time), bedroom, and a living area. The rest of the house is just filled with, what I am finding to be, a bunch of junk. 

I am ready to simplify my life and take it down to the minimum. What do I really need and what can I do without? This is proving to be a big challenge for me and I am willing, although my husband would say reluctantly, to take on that challenge. 

So now that we know what a yurt is and why we want to live in one, I can get back to the adventure!

Next time the story will continue with how we came to own our yurt and how we brought down the house. 

Getting Started

 My name is Lacie and I am The Countess of the castle and only second to The Count. My responsibilities include but are not limited to child wrangler, laundry guru, cookery specialist, and jane of all trades concerning the castle. You may ask what kind of credentials I have to perform all of these duties....hummm.....well.....really, none! Unless you want to count all of the in house training I have had, it is called first hand experience.

This is my first attempt at the blogging world and it is a bit scary to tell you the truth. I have all these thoughts of people hating what I write running through my head but I figure I just need to put myself out there. Please be gentle with me because I am not a writer, I actually hated English class in school and I could never get punctuation right. I don't even attempt to call myself a writer. All I want is to be able to express my passions and tell you a little about me and my family. You may find it entertaining or we may just be a bore.

I have been wanting to do this for a long time but I am one of those people that has lots of ideas but doesn't do all that much to makes those ideas real, so I guess this will be one step in actually moving toward one of my "great ideas".

There are many things that I would like to do in this life but there just doesn't seem like there is time. One of my real passions is living a different/simple life. One without all the trendy, newfangled things that most everyone thinks they NEED. The Count and I have taken the first steps in the direction of eliminating all of the stuff we don't need. We bought a house four years ago, our first home 2600 sq-ft, and now we want to sell it and move into 706 sq-ft. Oh, by the way we have two small children too.

This adventure began 8 months ago, we have had others as well, but it hasn't exactly been smooth sailing. There have been times where things seem to be going right and then times when you feel like you just want to give up! But we are committed to our dream and it always gets me thinking that anything worth doing takes hard work and perseverance.  We are always going to run into hard times and they produce perseverance which builds character and hope!  Here recently we have had some hard times but just telling you about our future plans helps me to regain my zeal for a different way of life.

If you have deduced that the 706 sq-ft structure we will be living in is a yurt then...ding....ding...ding....you are right. For awhile now we have been wanting to have a different lifestyle. One that isn't so fast paced and in your face all the time. We want to be able to enjoy our little family and maybe make it into a bigger family and really watch our children grow up. We knew we wanted a different life but we didn't know exactly how to go about it until one day when I was looking on Craigslist. I had teased my husband about living in a yurt and just for fun I searched for a yurt on Craigslist. What do ya know, a 30 ft yurt popped up in the search and it was only 2 hours away. I then proceeded to call my husband and kinda jokingly said " Hey there is a yurt for sale on craigslist.....how about I ask my dad if we can set it up on his property and live down there???." His reply was "I'm not saying no but ask your dad". I never thought that would be his response!

So I called my dad and asked him and he said yes. I really would have liked to see his face when I asked him if his daughter and family could essentially set up a big tent and live in it on his property. I am sure he was thinking that this will never happen!! Like I said before I have lots of "great ideas".

As much as I would love to sit here and go on and on, my family is in need of the cookery specialist. Keep checking back to get more of the story of The Count and Countess of Purple Yurt Chick and yes I will explain the meaning of that later too!!

Happy reading and farewell for now!!