The Continuing Saga of Ian's Yurt

Extra big thanks to Matt of Future Roots (and Yurtopia) for an amazing few days at Stanmer Park learning more about yurt making - and a whole lot of other stuff too. It felt like being in an Icelandic saga with tools and equipment from the Middle Ages everywhere (and also because my own yurt seems to be taking such a long time to make...)


Matt's yurt nestling in the glade.


Matt's woodland workshop MK II - sadly MK I was vandalised in July this year and burned to the ground.


I would have laughed at the idea of using one of these medieval shaving horses a few days ago but not anymore - they are so useful! They hold awkwardly shaped wood really tight and its quick and easy to turn your workpiece about. They are ideal for doing any shaping on the greenwood poles that Matt uses for his yurts and for loads of other jobs as well.


A selection of drawknives, they can be used to take off big chunks of wood or for fine shaving, simple and versatile.

This is a FROE, something I've never even heard of before, a sort of cross between an axe and a chisel. Again, these simple tools are all really versatile. We talked a lot about a general decline in skill with hand tools - maybe one day when power is not so cheap these things will come into their own again. Matt told a nice story about some yurt makers who had been brought over from Mongolia by one of the English manufactures. They needed a large fret saw so they just made one out of an old bicycle wheel. I guess they don't just pop down to B&Q when they need something in Ulan Bator. I love all that ingenuity and adaptability.

Once more, nice and simple, a forked tree holds a roof pole while it is de-knotted and de-barked. If you see one of Matt's yurts you will notice he gets a lovely finish on these wiggley poles; it's a different look altogether to my sawn timber style.

This is the jungle version of my suburban steamer, an old beer keg...

... sitting over a roaring fire inside an oil drum.

The steam goes from there into a section of gas mains pipe - lovely!

Once they have been thoroughly steamed, Matt bends the roof poles over a gas cylinder sitting in an old staircase...


...while the wall poles are bent between some scaffolding poles. It's all great, simple, ingenious stuff and making what you need out of what you have at hand.


This is my own wheel, third attempt now, built up from two half-inch layers of oak and glued up on a metal former. Next, we drilled it with holes for the roof poles.

But the roof poles have a square end ... time for the best bit of ingenuity of all, the sawn-off pick-axe head.

It gets heated red hot in the barbeque...

...then simply burns the round holes into squares ... Brilliant!

And here is my latest wheel homeward bound.

COMING SOON: the next volume of the Saga of Ian's Yurt, The Erection of the Frame, Part Two.

Thanks again Matt, it was great meeting you and having all those sorting-out-life-and-everything-else conversations. I found out lots about Yurt Making but also a whole lot I wasn't expecting about a simpler way of working with wood and working with greenwood too. Good luck with all your enterprises!

CAN WE BAIL OUT THE ENVIRONMENT NOW PLEASE?

Anyone for fish? Oops! Sorry, too late...

EXCERPT FROM POST BY GEORGE MONBIOT TODAY:
(also in today's Guardian)

"...As we goggle at the fluttering financial figures, a different set of numbers passes us by. On Friday, Pavan Sukhdev, the Deutsche Bank economist leading a European study on ecosystems, reported that we are losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every year, as a result of deforestation alone(1). The losses incurred so far by the financial sector amount to between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion. Sukhdev arrived at his figure by estimating the value of the services - such as locking up carbon and providing freshwater - that forests perform, and calculating the cost of either replacing them or living without them. The credit crunch is petty when compared to the nature crunch... "

See the whole article at Monbiot.com .....Tell it like it is George!

MORE ON FISH...
It's funny isn't it, the Icelanders are talking about doing a bit more fishing to sort out their economy...well, they'd better be quick. And they might have to steam a long, long way - we've already pretty much fished out everything around here.

MORE FISHINESS...
Isn't it great that the Bank of England is lending money to Iceland to help them honour deposits made by UK councils etc? Then if the Bank of England collapses she can just get a wee bailout from Iceland no doubt....or some fish??

Some Permaculture courses coming up:

If you can get to one of these courses it will probably be some of the most useful time you will spend in your life! A chance to study with Steve: see my earlier posts about his work and link to Chickenshack, the co-operative small holding he set up. It's all part of a possible future.

!! ALSO !! ... if you can venture further afield, Steve and Caryn have a Permaculture course coming up at Quinta Cabeça do Mato in the beautiful backwoods of Portugal, another wonderful opportunity to live and learn.

Wales - Tir Penrhos Isaf

I'm not long back from a few days with Chris and Lyn Dixon on their permaculture holding at Tir Penrhos Isaf in the forests of the Snowdonia National Park - huge heartfelt thanks to them both for all their friendly hospitality and inspiration. The visit has given me lots to think about and helped me make some very unexpected connections.

I was hoping to help them with their barn conversion but the weather had other ideas - I think I can say I've experienced real Welsh rain now and its WET even by Scottish standards.

...we did get a wee bit done in between the torrents though...

During the torrents, we had fascinating chats about their work and how they have nurtured their 7.2 acre plot back from its grass covered, sheep-grazed desert state in 1985 to today's glorious fully-fledged permacultural diversity. It's a tale of patient observation and a gentle, Taoist approach to life and work.

The Healing Power of Horses
Horses? I never thought I'd write about horses!
We also talked a lot about Lyn's work which was a real eye-opener for me. Lyn describes her work as "Horse Listening". Riders come to her with horses with whom they are having problems. The fascinating thing is that it's almost never the horse that has the problem. For a start their saddles etc may be fitted badly or their diet may be wrong for them. Also, the horses will sometimes reflect their riders' own structural problems, eg back or hip restrictions, but above all it's the riders' attitude of having to be in control and using bits, spurs and whips to force their will on the horse that is self-defeating. Learning to meet the horses in their emotional/empathetic world can be a deeply healing experience for the riders.
Chris and Lyn's work with land and horses resonates deeply with my own experience of treating people: a gentle listening approach is the most effective. (Maybe the rider is a bit like your mind and the horse is a bit like your body?) If these ideas can help the land's regeneration as well as riders' problems what else might they achieve?

The Precipice Walk - just a few miles above Chris and Lyn's place.

"When it all started to go wrong", by Michelangeloan.

Here we see where it all started to Go Terribly Wrong. The Bank of God lends Adam a fiver to get himself a pair of sub-prime underpants. It goes rapidly downhill after that - As We All Know Only-Too-700-Billion-Dollars-Well.

By the way, it's an odd number isn't it? Why not 726.457 billion dollars? It's funny that the bailout should work out exactly at a round number...

"Money is not the solution, it's the problem."

Well that's the most sensible thing I've read anywhere recently! It's a comment on the present financial woes and the 700 billion dollar bailout. And the insight comes not from a banking guru but from an elevator maintenance man in Mississipi, Billy Stripling, quoted in the Independent.

...and dont forget to BOOGIE !!

And here's a man who hasn't forgotten to boogie at all - Dave Arcari live at the Neptune in Hove. Fantastic to see my old blues chum from Perth giving it everything - demonic high energy steel guitar blues like you've never heard before - rock on Dave!

Just sad that this was the last time Debi and I may see Jezz and Tina in the flesh for a while as they are off to Oz - rock on you two as well! Good luck, we're missing you already.

I'll be keeping an eye on Jezz N Tina's Oz Adventures - (though it mainly seems to be just a load of drinking so far ...)

A RAY OF SUNSHINE

I've just read the first two of the Anastasia books - they're great! A real ray of sunshine in all the gloom.

The books are the story of an extraordinarily gifted girl living a simple life alone in the forests of Siberia and are full of her wisdom. She tells us about re-establishing our connection with the Earth, about how to grow plants so that they can help us, about freeing ourselves from all our techno-clutter and much much more...

It's wonderful to see ideas in print that have been drifting foggily around in my own head for a long time, for example, that there have been much more advanced civilisations on the Earth many thousands of years ago and we have an opportunity now to relearn some of their ancient knowledge through raising our consciousness - maybe just in the nick of time. Also, ideas about living in societies based on mutual help and co-operation rather than competition...

...and good to see Schumacher's words again:

"...We jolly well have to have the courage to dream if we want to survive and give our children a chance of survival..."

The Anastasia series is available from Cygnus books.


And another ray of sunshine!

My own feeling has long been to link the worlds of ecology and of healing, which is part of Anastasia's message. Other people are working on the same lines too. Earlier this month, I went to an inspiring evening, "Sustainability Through Earth Changes", with Ja'been and Barry at their Sanctuary in Newhaven. There were six of us there and we meditated and chatted together for a few hours while epic rainfall thundered down on the roof.

It feels so good that people are gathering in this way at all and a very positive message came through: that answers exist at a higher level for all our problems. I had fascinating visions of a three-dimensional symbol, "Clarity". Though I have had Reiki attunements I don't ever use the symbols so it was a bit strange that this should come up for me. Maybe the three-dimensional symbols link up with designs for structures we will be making soon which will not only shelter us but also cleanse and reinvigorate us.

You can see a bit about Ja'been and Barry's work at www.healingjourneys.co.uk.

!! MELTDOWN !!

Is that ICE or just another BANK ??

Everyday something else seems to collapse. What next? The Coral Reefs? The Health Service? The bee population?

The ice in the picture is part of the vanishing sheet on Greenland. Parts of it are melting three times faster than just five years ago.

I really doubt that we have the resolve or power to do anything effective to turn things around. In fact, quite the opposite: we're belching out smoke and chomping up resources faster than ever.

(Read climatologist James Hansen on the "tipping point".)

If climate change hasn't already gone past the point of no return it seems inevitable that it soon will - so here we go for six degrees plus with all that entails.

So what to do? Well for me it's time to head for the hills and woods, to start walking my talk and start to live a low impact way of life, even if it's a step at a time. For the best chance of survival for our children in the future I believe we will need to be as self-sufficient and resilient as possible. The more we can grow, make and do for ourselves the better. To me the best bet is WOODLAND to provide food, fuel and materials, ideally with plenty of water running through it on a south facing slope. So I'm starting to look for suitable places to live and work in some kind of co-operative woodland group.

There's stuff we can do in the cities too: check out Guerrilla Gardening. Let's plant trees and raspberrries and stuff in those bits of waste ground. There's also inspiration in how Cuba coped after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the loss of their cheap oil supply: The Power of Community.

Long live the tree!

Yurt Chapter 99

The first tentative attempt at assembling the frame. Everything seems a bit shakey...

A few days later ... so shakey, in fact, that I decided to give it all a rest until after the yurt-making course I'm doing next month with Matt of Yurtopia. Time for a little experienced input I think.

Anyone for TUNA?

Well it looks like you'd better be quick ... some say that the tuna is facing commercial extinction. Here is part of a report from the Environmental Justice Foundation:

"Today, many stocks of the major commercial tuna species are fully or over-exploited. Of all the principle market species, bluefin have suffered the most from the ravages of overexploitation, for two main reasons: their slow reproductive rate, and their exceptionally high value in the sashimi market, where a single fish can be worth up to US$100,000. Most seriously overexploited is the southern bluefin, which is now listed by the IUCN (the world conservation union) as being Critically Endangered."

Whole report at: http://www.ejfoundation.org/page270.html

Whilst in the vein of ocean stuff, I remember reading an article a while ago about veteran yachtsman, Sir Robin Knox-Johnston. What a guy! (And I fancy a blast on that catamaran...) The man completed the Velux5Oceans 2006/7 solo round-the-world race, finishing in 4th position at the age of 68. He said that he didn't see a single whale during the whole voyage. "The seas have changed" he added chillingly.

Yurt Crown - plan C

Bending the wood into a 2'6" diameter circle for the crown was a total failure - twice - so I decided to make the crown out of sawn sections - including some shhhhhh! plywood...

... check out the fiendishly cunning radial arm marking out of the blocks thing going on here ...
... still going well ... maybe it's going to work this time ...
... another layer of ....shhhhhh! plywood .....
... and its happening!

YES YES YES !!!!!!

This is has surely got to be one of the most monumental monuments to human stubborn persistence of all time ... or something ...

leaden ripples

Now that things have calmed down here a bit I've been able to play around with some photos - this is one from Loch Rannoch a year ago - I love those brooding leaden ripples...
lots more of my photos at earthenergyimages.com

Frustration for Mr Yurt

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear .... making the crown for the yurt has been a wee bit tiresome. This pile of wreckage is the remains of two failed attempts. In spite of steaming the wood for hours and hours it wouldn't bend enough before cracking. So for attempt three I'm going to abandon bending and build up the circle from sawn sections. If at first you don't succeed ...

Progress has also been slowed down by the torrents of rain and gales we have had. My chum John said I might have been better off making an ark. I will give it a go sometime as long as there is a design that doesn't have any bent wood in it.

Easter Island

A grim reminder of what happens when a population uses up its natural resources - when the trees had gone the Easter Islanders could no longer make boats to fish from and birds stopped visiting as they had nowhere to roost. Without trees, the soil was eroded and half of the islands plants became extinct.

Now we're doing it on a global scale and our natural support systems are creaking at the seams.

Ian's yurt - chapter two

I've been getting on with the yurt between the downpours and gales. I made a box to steam the wood for the roof slats so it's soft enough to bend into a nice curve.


The box has room for nine slats, steam supplied by an Argos wallpaper stripper (thanks for the suggestion Mark!) Two or three hours in there and they are well cooked. I suppose the box will also be handy if I ever grow any of those giant carrots you see.


Anyway, out of the box and swiftly into blocks laid out in a curve on the bench...


It takes twenty nerve-racking seconds or so to bend the wood into shape with firm steady pressure, pushing it into the blocks as I go...


...and that's it!
I let them cool down for half an hour or so. Once they're out of the blocks they spring back a bit but keep a good curve; I cracked a couple of them but there's still plenty to do the roof.

I've made the door and it's frame so the next job is making the circular crown for the top of the roof and cutting the joints in it. After that it's time for sewing a lot of canvas - which I've never done in my life, never mind ... live and learn.

Grafting course

If you buy a fruit tree it will probably be the product of a graft onto a rootstock. I used to think it was a really difficult thing to do but it just takes a bit of care and a very sharp knife.

Brighton Permaculture Trust run a one day Fruit Tree Grafting course which tells you all about it and gives plenty of practical experience. You cut a growth bud on a little chip of wood from the tree you want to propagate. Then you cut a matching chip into your rootstock and pop your chip into it holding it into place with tape.

Here's an apple tree I grafted on the course and got to take home - you can just see the graft held on by the tape just under the first leaves:




















Once the graft has taken properly you trim off the rootstock above the union - and that's it!

I didn't realise that lots of ornamental trees are propagated in this way too, eg ash and maple. Also, it's cheap: whereas a fruit tree might cost £20 the rootstock would just be a £1 or so and your budding supply could be free. I like it! It's tempting to do a bit of guerilla gardening and start popping some fruit trees into wasteland here and there...

Ian's yurt - chapter one

I've had a book on yurts for years and always loved the shape and graceful patterns of these circular tents from Asia. Finally I decided to make one - partly because we will make good use of the space but also just because it feels like a good idea. If you do a bit of research you will soon see how clever they are. The design has been going for thousands of years because it works. Yurt inhabitants survive in temperatures of -50 degrees and through violent storms inside a few layers of felt held up with some bits of wood, all tied together with rope. The whole thing is quick to take apart and to put up and it all fits onto the back of a yak or two.

In the photo above, a group of yurts sits alongside houses near Ulan Bator. (I found it on Google Earth - a great place to find pictures taken in out of the way places).

Yurts are mostly made one at a time so they express their makers' skills, tastes and traditions and show what materials they had at hand. They can be made from sawn hardwood timber or wiggley coppiced poles. Not yet having access to woodland, I got some nice ash from a sawmill near Midhurst just down the road from here. All the wood for my 12 foot diameter yurt fitted inside my corsa. Well, only just...

I have had to get a few tools together and make a workbench but have now finished both the folding side wall sections - with some welcome help from my chum Jeremy. Here he is tying the last of the 1,700 or so knots. The next bit is the steaming of the roof poles. I have bent wood for the sides of guitars but that is just 2.5 mm thick whereas the poles are 1" thick - ah well, should be interesting ... more soon ...

Wales again...

Debi and I had long weekend down in Wales together including a rainy visit to the Centre for Alternative Technology. That's Debi posing inside the hub of a wind turbine - it's not every day you get to do that.

Below we have a bizarre building, I thought it was a giant hedgehog for a moment but in fact it's a roof studded with empty bottles. I wonder if the idea will ever catch on in the suburbs though...
(and it might be difficult in a block of flats?)

...but you do get a lovely light inside...

This exhibit "The treadmill of happiness" appealed to me a lot and it's just what I was trying to say in my "Tirade No 1 - MONEY and Stuff". We're always chasing our tails aren't we? (And wrecking the planet in the process.)

Recognition at last...

Up in the Welsh hills with Steve

Just a few photos from a beautiful walk that Steve took us on up around a waterfall not far from Chickenshack.

I was just waiting for a couple of elves or a dragon to jump out from the trees...magic!