From Yurts to Barns

It is with mixed feelings that I announce the end of our current yurt adventure. We are in the process of buying a house north of our current location. We are moving into a barn. OK, we are moving into a house with a cambrel roof that makes it looks like a barn. It has the same basic lay out as the yurt (open loft master bedroom over a kitchen with an open living room and utilities and garage in the basement). Oh, and room for a yurt. Sometime this summer we plan on moving the yurt to our new property and using it as a playroom/guest house/workshop. I'm going to try and post information about taking down a yurt and our new floor plans later on in the year.
But for now.....
a few photos of the things that have been going on around here in the last month since I posted.
We have had a big thaw and a couple of wind storms. One of them picked up our canoe and pitched it into the forest.

Thankfully we are back on track and filling in with snow.

Fresh tracks on a Christmas ski at the nature center.

A visiting goshawk right off of the yurt deck

Is Nicki pampering her dogs a bit too much? A pawicure, really?

They seem to like it.

Leo and Nisha buddying up.

Leo getting ready for a peewee mushing race.

Leo and Georgie crossing the finish line after Georgie going the wrong way, stopping, and Leo falling off.

The Schneider ski train (thanks for the photo Lia). Great resistance training.

Kaya showing off her usual smile.

One of Leo's many amazing lego creations.

Christmas morning.

Pulks on the Cheap #2

So here is the completed pulk made from a bike trailer.



I bought some replacement backpack hip belts from REI. They only cost $5 and they worked great for attaching the pulk poles to. I attached grommets to the belt and then threaded bolts through the poles and hip belt to attach them.
Here is the hip belt with the grommets, the small gold circles.

I originally wanted to put the grommets through the cinch strap (black) but it proved to be too far forward. Luckily there was some additional material else where that was trickier to put grommets through but worked fine.

The usefulness of this zipped pocket was eliminated.

I used electrical conduit and bent it with a conduit bender. I drilled it out with normal drill bits and a cordless drill. When drilling metal you need to use slow speeds, and you need to start with a small bit and slowly increase the diameter of the bit as you change them out (1/16, 1/8, 3/16, 1/4). It takes awhile but it works.

Here is the attachment to the hip belt. The gold grommet is where the fabric on the hip belt will go. From left to right - locking nut, washer, pipe, washer, grommet, washer, bolt head.

After trying it out on the driveway, I found that it glides great and is pretty comfortable.

The bike trailer actually had holes and an attachment system for poles. So, on the next trailer the pole to trailer connection is going to be the big thing to figure out.