Two Winters, One Tiny Yurt

Beige tucked a yurt into a quiet corner of a friend’s farm and built a life around firelight, spring water, and a lot of grit. It’s simple on purpose—and harder than it looks.

The part where a yurt becomes home

She’s been in this round canvas room for two years and is rolling into a third winter. Nights come with owls and coyotes, mornings with that clean, forest hush. It’s small, it’s scrappy, and it fits.

No power lines out here. Candles take over at dusk. The wood stove does heat and winter cooking; a fire pit steals the show in summer. Phone gets a mercy charge while driving to work, and water shows up in hauled jugs from a nearby farm or spring.

The yurt sits tucked at the edge of a friend’s property, which sounds idyllic—and honestly is—but she pays her way in farm hands. Lambing help, hay, manure shoveling, the whole barnyard bingo. On other days she mentors local kids outdoors, building fires, making medicine, and generally turning “nature class” into an adventure.

How the whole thing got built in a weekend

She started with a tent because that’s what she could do fast, fell in love with this little pocket of woods, and then went for it. Bought a yurt from Groovy Yurts, rounded up about ten friends, and in one long, ridiculous weekend the platform went down and the yurt went up.

The platform is very “use what you have”: a 16-foot circle staked into the ground, filled with straw bales, more stakes through the bales, two-by-fours laid across, then plywood. A rope cinch around the outside so the bales don’t bulge out like a busted belt. Simple. Weirdly sturdy.

Inside, everything earns its keep. There’s an herbal corner with tinctures and a little tea prep zone. The “sink” drains into a bucket that gets hauled outside. No plumbing to break, nothing to freeze.

Little hacks that keep the place running

Best fridge ever: a cooler set into the floor so it actually touches the earth. The ground does the cooling, a thick blanket does the insulating, and groceries survive a week easy when the air is cold.

Overhead, there’s a clothesline for plants—mint now, nettles and raspberry leaves in season. Garlic braids hang up to cure. The kitchen looks like a tiny apothecary half the time and honestly, it suits the place.

Winter was rough until the upgrade. A heavy cast-iron stove now anchors one side, with kindling, dry wood, and a stash of newspaper within arm’s reach. It holds heat like a champ, which matters when the world outside is a freezer.

The bathroom situation, because everyone asks

Showers are the river—or a lake—when the water’s warm enough. The rest of the year? She hits yoga classes and cleans up after. It’s a very Canadian solution: do your downward dog, then use the locker room.

The toilet is a deep, simple hole with a pallet on top and a cutout. Not glamorous, but it works, and it’s honestly better than a lot of gas station bathrooms.

The woodshed is pure salvage—pallet base, offcuts for walls, and one of those free tarps lumberyards give away. Keeps the wood off the ground and dry enough to catch quick. Nothing fancy, super effective.

Tools live in there too: saws, shovels, hammers, the whole off-grid starter kit. Having everything in one spot saves time and keeps the rust at bay.

A garden that borrows from everywhere

Vegetable beds sprawl in little pockets, and there’s this clever cold frame made from windows someone left at the curb. It’s the classic roadside score turned food machine.

Peas climb a hanging lattice built from forest sticks and binder twine rescued from hay bales. Nothing store-bought, all of it sturdy enough to get the job done.

In the trees behind the yurt, she’s playing long game: clearing dead branches to let in more sun, then tucking in native foods—elderberries, wild ginger, fiddleheads, leeks. When the light attracts bullies like buckthorn, she pulls them. Forest gardening with a side of accountability.

The slow work that no one sees

Yurts need babysitting. The tension band can loosen, the top canvas can creep, and moisture tries to sneak in all the time. It’s a constant loop of adjust, check, dry, repeat.

No driveway either. Everything—water, firewood, groceries, laundry—comes and goes on foot through a swampy stretch and a sliver of woods. Great leg day, every day.

Then there are the bugs. Being hugged by two wetlands makes summer lively, to put it nicely.

And because the world isn’t all trees and birds, there’s the neighbor who complained about an unpermitted structure. So the fork in the road is clear: get a permit or move the yurt.

She’s also craving a softer version of this life—maybe solar panels, definitely more people around. Imagine a couple of off-grid places nearby so someone can feed each other’s stoves in a blizzard. Little things that make the hard parts less hard.

Winter hit hard, then she got smarter

She built the place in mid-October—beautiful, terrible timing. No stove installed, no wood stacked. That first cold snap must’ve laughed.

With a bargain-bin stove and not enough fuel, nights were brutal. Sometimes the room dropped cold enough to see her breath. Getting out from under the blankets felt like a dare.

Second winter, different story: better stove, enough wood, and the discipline to get up in the night and feed the fire. It was basically night and day—still simple, not miserable anymore.