When I bought 4.3 acres of heavily wooded land across from a mom and pop gas station that sells the best broasted chicken in Cumberland County, Tennessee, I knew the land dipped down from the road. BUT my realtor thought the middle was level enough for a barndominium. Once it was cleared, however, we discovered it would need 78 loads of dirt for a 30 x 60 steel building, an RV pad, and a garage. Plus it would need 5 loads of gravel.

Another contractor went out and said that the land was NOT conducive for a barndomiinium much less a steel one – too steep, the cleared area wasn’t large enough and to widen it to the east wasn’t feasible because that was the area marked off by the state environmental engineer for a secondary drainage/leech field for the septic. To widen it to the west won’t work because there is a gully there. Cumberland County does not have a sewer system except in the downtown areas and my land is “out in the country” a term I learned in San Benito, Texas and here in Spring Creek. TOWN versus – well I don’t know that’s pretty far out there (wait what? five miles is far???

So, I got referred to a family owned business that builds sheds, small barns, and cottages and that’s how I learned about shed homes. Hours and hours of research and doing cost estimates and I still could not find anything that could be built quickly so I could drive 2,100 miles from Nevada to Tennessee with three dogs of my own, three cats of my own, and Ännie’s two dogs and have a place to stay with a bathroom, a catio with an insulated cat house, and two dog exercise areas with insulated dog houses. Bandit plays well with my dogs for awhile, but he’s been known to “go off” on a playmate especially if another dog gets too close to his mom. Oz is food aggressive but plays well – you just can’t feed her anywhere near another dog.

Ännie is coming with me to live for up to a year while I write her biography and she helps me set up the property and teach me how to live off grid in the event the nationwide grid goes down. We also plan on going ghost hunting on Bimini and in the surrounding areas. And I said that with a straight face. I want to get the high speed camera Joshua P. Warren recommends, and go exploring while I still can walk – with a cane but I can walk.

When I started this project of moving, so I could get out of my mortgage and downsize and prepare for my last 15 – 20 years – something you MUST do when you get close to age 70, Russia and Ukraine were at war. Yesterday, Israel was attacked and this morning they declared war. The vision I had in 1972 of the United States ceasing to exist by 2025 is no longer some 17 year old’s flash in the pan “vision of the future”. And so I’ve decided on a yurt.

Crossville is much cooler than the rest of Tennessee. It gets humid, but not as bad as Knoxville nor Nashville and nothing compared with Memphis. They do get snow – up to a foot, but it usually melts. They get a lot of rain. A LOT. And they get E1 tornados. Everyone who advised me on this or that failed to understand windstorm certification requirements. Plus, there is a private restriction on my land – no modular and no mobile homes. I also can’t have a pig farm.

Freedom Yurt Cabins are wooden structures – not fabric – and they are permanent – not portable. The best part is they are currently certified up to115 mph but they are working on getting them up to 155 mph which would be absolutely marvelous. And yurts are aerodynamic anyway.

Unlike Armstrong Steel who conned me into signing a contract with them, Trust Pilot has wonderful reviews of Freedom Yurt as a company. And I found one review from someone who lives in his yurt year round which is what I plan on doing.

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/freedomyurtcabins.com?fbclid=IwAR00eBBNFxUsH61I0G4g40tGivMRXdl1JVR-7g8nRLFHT-Y4b1-3emcO7ZE&stars=5

What I hope to do is put my house on the market, hopefully FOR SALE BY OWNER, with my friend Brent using his new drone to film the cul de sac, fly over the house and back again and then fly around in a circle, and move the minute the house is out of the contingency period. By Spring I’ll have had all the carpet replaced with peel and stick vinyl flooring that looks like wood, and hopefully, I’ll have sold the African sculptures and Native American art and artifacts. I want to switch gears and stick to Smokey Mountain and woodland art.

I’ve reserved a Penske cargo van to transport the cats and my dogs, and Ännie can drive my Ranger with her two dogs and I’ll have a moving van move the rest. Everything can do into storage and we can board the dogs and cats for a week while a yurt is being erected and an attached shed is built for a bathroom.

This is EXACTLY what I want only in blue and tan like the one nestled in the aspens and pine trees.

My land, I think, can easily be graded so I can have a series of yurts, possibly connected to one another. I’m assuming I’ll need French drains and a series of retaining walls which are recommended anyway by Vastu experts when there is a downward slope from the road.

Vastu is similar to feng shui. There are many vastu engineer consultants now along with feng shui experts – Moni Castenda lives in Tennessee but she does not do house calls.

https://www.vastutruth.com/vastu-tips-directional-slope-topography-of-properties

My idea, if the land will cooperate and because land and trees and rocks and earth are all energy like everything else, I do mean IF IT will cooperate, is to imitate what’s called “Vernacular Architecture” a “style that is designed based on local needs, availability of construction materials and reflecting local. traditions. At least originally, vernacular architecture did not use formally schooled architects, but relied on the design skills and tradition of local builders”. Specifically, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

I have fantasized about having a small fortune some day so I could build covered walkways like I walked through in the Summer Palace in Beijing in 1987 which went all the way around a lake. Years ago I watched Japanese tv series where the main characters lived in a traditional house with a courtyard and all the rooms opened into the courtyard. One. room was for cooking, another was a bedroom – there were several – another a Shinto shrine, and there was a sitting room. I was hooked. If can have one yurt as a bedroom with a guest room in a loft with an extension into a traditional stick built “shed” which will house the bathroom, then I could have another as a kitchen with a huge pantry behind a wooden screen or with doors, and a dining area, another would be for my 1904 Knabe grand piano so the cats can no longer damage it and I can play it, with my living room furniture, another for a library, craft room, office, and finally a small one for a “yoga” meditation room for the Tibetan thangkas where I can escape the dogs and cats and immerse myself in spiritual pursuits. It’s next to impossible doing that now with a cat hurling and a dog wanting to go out.

If I could have covered walkways or breezeways built between each yurt, then ths layout might work:

No more sweating about the slope. Click on each photo for the full article plus descriptions and other photos.

I have the platt survey when the land was registered as a two-lot subdivision, and the survey I just paid for. I have the septic permit and I paid for the water tap on July 25. There is a four to six month waiting list. I sent a formal request to Armstrong to refund my non-refundable deposit. There is a class action lawsuit against them that was sent to arbitration but that’s because no one compiled all the complaints into one color-coded dabase showing a pattern. I have. That battle is yet to be won, but I’m certain I will win.

My 2013 Ford Escape decided to not want to be driven anymore so it got towed to my friend’s monastery where it waits for me to get it fixed. Here is is on July 31, 2023 parked in the gravel. Thanks to Brian, I got to hear first just how steep the land is. Others then went out and said the same thing.

BUT that does NOT mean I cannot erect yurts and live in the woods.

The land is covered in white oak, red oak, maple, one chestnut unless it got cut down, and a lot A LOT of hickory. The wood pile is at the back where I’m told there’s a bluff that slopes down to a 100 acre farm. There’s a church next door and my property wraps behind the church lot and the farm wraps around both properties. A stream ends a few hundred yards west of the church. I wanted enough land so I would not have to deal with neighbors but I didn’t want to live so far out that there was NO ONE around.

The septic drain field aka leech field is apparently on the slope behind those logs. Not sure, but the waste will literally go over the edge once a toilet is up and in use.

I just have to make sure the septic tank is lower than the “BATHHOUSE” OMG I never thought I’d have a bathhouse. Better than an outhouse though.

Further Advice

https://chiceco-yurtliving.blogspot.com/2013/07/yurts-feng-shui.html

A SPECIAL THANKS to Ännie Schade who has been trying to get me to think YURT for months and to Adam Leech and his father of Limitless Construction who wrote an email I forwarded to Armstrong Steel letting them know my land CANNOT support a steel structure of ANY kind no matter how small.