Friends and their Yurts

[Dan R-M]

I was out of town for a long weekend, gone up to northern Indiana to show our Kenyan interns another kind of organic farm. A few families live there together, one in an old farmhouse, one in a mobile home, one in a modified corn crib, and one in a second-hand 30' Pacific Yurt. In this case, second-hand means better than new, because the first owners put so much of their love, work, and identity into making their own.
My own descriptions cannot do it justice, so I'll leave that to them (cause I've prodded them to join the forum).
I want to note, though, that the experience they relate, and how their family of four has grown into their yurt, are a story and a situation that sold us on how great yurts can be.
Additionally, my wife's dad is the administrator of a camp near there that has also made good use of a 30' PY, a 30' CY, and a whole village of stick-frame yurts. They create a unique experience for children and adults at the camp.
My point is, you may have no idea what kind of an impact you make on someone visiting your yurt. People who have no concept of anything beyond a standard stick-frame will be shocked, skeptical, curious, and finally inspired by the possibilities that yurts embody.
We who are yurt-owners are emissaries of the wide-open world of living in the round, and I'm delighted to be in the club

[Jafo]

Just last week, the guy who helped build the yurt deck stopped up there while I was there on vacation, and he was shocked when he saw the inside. People just are so surprised at how much room there is in mine (30').

[Jafo]

Originally Posted by Dan R-M

My point is, you may have no idea what kind of an impact you make on someone visiting your yurt. People who have no concept of anything beyond a standard stick-frame will be shocked, skeptical, curious, and finally inspired by the possibilities that yurts embody.
We who are yurt-owners are emissaries of the wide-open world of living in the round, and I'm delighted to be in the club

The same can be said for manufacturers, which is why stuff like this is counterproductive:

http://www.yurtforum.com/forums/yurt...ently-128.html

[HawaiiYurts]

I love it, Dan~~ We just had a couple come visit our office yurt. When the man was getting ready to leave he said, "You know, I came here expecting to say, 'Let's head in the other direction, fast!' I thought this was going to be some kind of bulky, flimsy, ugly tent. But seeing this, being inside, looking at the quality and strength... You know... I can see it now! I can see it, I like it, and I'd recommend it!"

When I started our biz many years ago now, I would get SO MUCH resistance from people when discussing yurts. There was so much misinformation out there, it would drive me nuts! So I would spend countless hours on local forums and things, correcting the misinformation and backing up my info. When the highway frontage property came up for sale near our house, I said, "You know what? That is the solution. We're going to put up a yurt there, in one of the rainiest places on Earth, where people have to see it and see it working. We're going to just let people realize for themselves that they do work, that they can be beautiful, and that all their misgivings are misguided.

It's so true, what you say Dan. Yurts get inside of us and we can't help but share the good news. And we get it all back tenfold when we see, right in front of us, people's paradigms shift in such a beautiful, healthy way. And it pays itself forward. For every one person you educate about yurts, they'll tell 50 and so it goes. The most popular question we would get when we started was, "What's a YURT?". Now, we rarely ever get that question anymore. Good news travels fast!

[LDCooper]

Now if we could only convince folks to resource pool, buy some small tracks of land and buy into yurt communities...someday....