How to Cook in a Yurt

There are many ways to cook in a yurt. Basically it depends on how “off-grid” you are and how much space you have. There are some 30-foot yurts that are hooked up to gas and electricity and have a full kitchen. In other instances you’ll have a 12 ft yurt with just a small wood burning stove that you can boil water on and cook other small and simple meals with. We don’t have a “kitchen” to speak of in our yurt, but, as we have electricity, we do have some essential appliances that we use: a small dorm-sized refrigerator with a true freezer compartment, an electric water boiler kettle, a hot plate, a toaster oven, a pancake griddle, and a crock pot. 

The fridge is a must-have for us until we are able to create an underground refrigerating cellar. I also need to get better at meal planning and shopping/harvesting, so that there is less need to store food in the fridge. Right now in the fridge we have some veggies, pesto, jam, cheese, butter, almond milk, and a couple miscellaneous bottles of sauce.

The water boiler is a great appliance to have, because it boils 2 liters of water in under 7 minutes. This is great for dishwashing, hand washing, hot chocolate, getting a head start on boiling water for pasta, or just anything else you use hot water for! 

We don’t use the hot plate very often, usually only when we want to cook pasta. But to be honest, I don’t really like cooking pasta in the yurt, because there is a lot of steam and water happening, and we already are going to have a hard enough time keeping water out of the yurt! I also use the hot plate when I want to cook eggs or sauté veggies for a crock pot recipe. 

The toaster oven can be used for anything a regular oven can be used for, just in smaller batches. I like to toast english muffins, bake cookies or biscuits, make “coconut bacon”, make egg/veggie dishes. 

I use the pancake griddle for making big batches of pancakes to freeze and making quesadillas (I like to add refried beans and spinach so it’s not just cheese). Now that I think of it, I don’t actually know what else I use it for! But it’s worth it for a freezer full of frozen pancakes. 

The crock pot! As many of you know, the crock pot is the best and most magical appliance for easy meals. I’ve made all kinds of soups, stews, lasagna, enchilada casserole, grain dishes, seitan, rice pudding, mulled cider...I have a cookbook dedicated to vegan crock pot recipes so I am getting a lot of ideas from that. I’m going to try to make granola in the crock pot next. Seriously though, just google your favorite recipe and add “crock pot” and you’ll surely find something. It just takes a little practice to get used to your individual crock pot’s heating nuances to adjust the recipes.

I also have a food processor and a blender, but I haven’t once used either of them. Dyrrt used to use the blender a lot to do raw food shakes in the morning, but we just haven’t gotten back into the habit of that yet. So we’ll keep the blender around, but I’ll probably end up getting rid of the food processor.  

Here is a picture of my dry food pantry! This is where I keep staples such as beans, grains, preserves both canned and dried, popcorn, spices, and oils. I also store other kitchen essentials such as storage containers, glass jars, appliances, aluminum foil, etc. 

So that’s how we cook in the yurt. I have to admit, it’s very hard for me to not have a full kitchen! I’m adjusting though, and learning to make meals more simply, but just as deliciously. 

Building the loft and deck

We knew we wanted a loft in the yurt, as it would add about 30% more floorspace. Our first drafts of the loft had it as a simple rectangular loft. However, the landowner, S, had a great idea to make the loft "teardrop" or "yin-yang" shaped. This way it flowed with the "circle-ness" of the yurt and also appealed to our penchant for eastern philosophies. To save money and resources we went down to the river to look for beaver-cut logs that we could use. We ended up finding exactly what we needed, and the helpful beaver had even cut the logs to the perfect size! We used the beaver cut posts in the front of the loft where they could be seen, and cut our own lumber for the back pieces.

S is a master craftsman when it comes to pretty much anything. He builds lightweight teardrop trailers that mid-sized vehicles can pull, so anything with curves is his specialty! He started by ripping thinner, bendable layers from a rough-cut cedar 2x4 and bent and layered them into place along the edge of the loft so that it resulted in a full-sized 2x4 yin-yang shaped cedar wood beam.

Cross-bracing was built and then we put cedar decking over the top to finish it off. 

While the loft was being built I worked on de-barking a large log. We then cut it in half and used it for posts on the deck. 

Once the deck was complete along with a Hopi Kiva style wooden ladder, S hand crafted a cedar door with upcycled tempered glass.  The kitties love looking out of this beautiful door!

How we built the floor

First thing’s first! We found the perfect spot for the yurt, now we need a floor. We decided that a porch area would be pretty cool, so we included that in our plans. 

First thing to be done was dig square holes for the pier blocks. These pier blocks placed on top of 16" square garden paver blocks provide a solid foundation with adjustable height brackets. We dug and leveled a lot of holes past the “gopher line” so that they wouldn’t mess the with leveling at all. 

After the foundation was laid, framing had to go up! We placed 4"x4" pressure treated lumber running cross-ways placed into the adjustable height brackets placed in the pier blocks.  The 2x6" pressure treated lumber is run 16" apart and rest on the 4x4" cross support.  These were all leveled with the adjustable pier block brackets.

1" wood strips were placed along all the 2x6" floor joists to receive the 1.5" thick foam insulation.

After putting down insulation, time for the tongue-and-groove plywood floor to be installed!

After cutting the plywood floor to a nice 16’ circle, just perfect for the yurt to sit on, we then installed a “bumper board” all the way around the perimeter of the circle so the walls of the yurt could have something to nestle up against.  This is actually a little dirty secret because without the bumper board, setting up the walls without them falling off the edge of the floor circle would be muy difficult.  With the bumper board it's a piece of cake! 

Then the roof rafters can be installed within the metal cable to provide a tension system.  Putting up the rafters to the center, circular support is quick but hazardous work without a hardhat.  Once the first 8 main rafters are installed the remaining go in quite well.  We only had one rafter fall out during the process.

For insulation, felt carpet padding fit the bill nicely as it is made from 100% recycled material!

After insulating, we put the recycled billboard canvas on the outside.

All of this took about 5 days. The next post will cover the building of the loft and finishing the cedar plank deck.

How did we end up here?

For almost 5 years, I and my partner-in-adventure, J, have wanted to live “off-grid.” We pored through scores of books, read article after article about [urban] homesteading, composting, raising chickens, companion planting, using herbs medicinally, etc., etc., ad infinitum. During this time, J was working full-time while I finished my undergrad degree. It was important for both of us that I get a degree, even if I didn’t use it right away. 

We decided pretty early on that we wanted to live in the Pacific Northwest. Homesteading requires water and good access to lots of it! Also, we are both desert rats and we craved to be somewhere green and wet. Portland, OR was our first choice because we are as weird as it takes to live there. We also started saving money, because moving is expensive! Especially an out-of-state move. We also wanted to make sure we had enough money saved up so that we didn’t have to worry about getting jobs right away.

Making the move right after I graduated made the most sense, so we started telling our friends that we were leaving at the end of the summer. For me, at least, the more people we told, the more I was able to convince myself that, yes, we are really moving! We had been in the same place for so many years that it almost seemed impossible that we would leave. I graduated in May and this is how I spent my summer:

May - relax after 5 years of school!

June- get a job nannying, start looking for housing/jobs from Spokane to Seattle to Portland to Ashland.

July -  put in 2 months notice on the house we were renting! Start honing in on housing in Portland area. Get creative! Look for tiny homes for rent, RVs for rent, communal living situations, work trade offers, “cabin-sitting”, etc. The most difficult part of this was finding a place that would accommodate me, J, 2 cats, and a fish! 

August - We started talking to a woman in the Portland area who had an RV for rent on her small permaculture farm. She also had the option for someone to come put down a yurt or another RV in a back meadow. After much research, J and I found an economically feasible yurt and decided to buy it. The fellow at Light Feet Yurts who makes them uses salvaged lumber and upcycled billboard canvas. The feeling was pretty great. We were homeowners! Whatever happened, we would always have a giant tent to put over our heads. Plans fell through with the Portland woman, and after expanding our search again, all signs led to the Olympic Peninsula. We quickly found 3 or 4 landowners who were looking for someone to come put down a yurt and provide a work-trade for rent. We made plans with all of them to meet up at the beginning of September and J and I crossed our fingers that one of them would work out! 

So we got rid of half of our junk, packed the rest away, said our goodbyes to our dear friends, and drove a U-haul to Washington! The drive took 3 days, as we had to drive out of our way through CA to pick up the yurt. Traveling with the cats was not as terrible as I thought it would be; I’ll probably do a post on traveling with cats later.

So we spent a few nights in Tacoma as we met all the landowners and made a decision. It was a difficult decision, because I had set my heart on one of the other places we were looking at, but when we got to this place and met S and his wife, Ji, we knew that this was where the Universe had been guiding us. The land is gorgeous, S is a knowledgable and skilled craftsman who has all the tools we will ever need, and most important of all, J and I are able to provide service to S and Ji that they desperately need, more than any of the others. 

We plan to remain friends with the others we met and create a good network of like-minded people.  We would also like to engage in farmsteading/homesteading with an out-of-box, Blue Ocean approach to make it more sustainable as a comtemporary lifestyle:

So that’s the beginning of the story, how we came to be where we are now. Soon I’ll post about how we built the floor for the yurt, how cooking meals is different, how your whole routine changes! I hope you learn something from reading this blog, or at least are inspired to live a little more the way you want to.