the (d)evolutionary

Here’s écovallée at 4pm yesterday, when we officially opened for the season.

It’s a terrible shot, taken with a bad camera on a reasonably priced phone. But cloud cover was very handy with the amount of walking around carrying things that had to be done before our first guests arrived.

The forecast for the rest of the week is mostly sunny, with daytime temperatures in the low 20s. Looks like they picked a good week for it.

Here’s this year’s Peaseblossom frame up on the platform, before the cover went back on.

For new readers, it’s an 18-foot Kyrgyz-style coppiced chestnut yurt. Sleeps four very comfortably. The floor is locally sourced pine. Very comfortable on the foot. It gets furnished with comfy beds, duvets and all that stuff you don’t want to carry with you on holiday.

It sits in mixed woodland of sweet chestnut, hawthorne, wild service, oak and hornbeam, and overlooks a grassy valley onto more woodland that has, for some reason, a fair amount of pine.

Just down the hill (as you can see in the previous posts) is the solar shower and compost toilet. Out of shot, to the right, is a canvas-covered kitchen and eating area shared with an identical yurt. There’s one other yurt way away to the left, with its own kitchen. That one’s a 12-footer perfect for two, or two and a bit. There’s also another 12-foot yurt off to the right and down the hill, but that’s just for playing in. Hence the sand pit and play area behind.

First guests of the season arrive tomorrow. And the écovallée summer begins…

We didn’t get the yurt onto the platform tonight. This is how far I got with the platform by about 8.30pm.

Trimming the boards took longer than I thought, but that edge is 18 metres in a straight line and quite a bit of it’s down the grain. Still can’t work out how it ended up too large, but it’s finally the right size.

By this time tomorrow, everything should be in place – including a new Lovely Thing in the compost toilet I’ve told you nothing about. It’s all coming together.

Here’s the platform at 13h45 the way I wanted it to be at 11h00.

Still on schedule but a few things to do before the yurt can go on it. Like trim the whole circle,’cos it’s too big, sand and seal the front door, mop the floor (no small job, that), add the edge, and fetch the yurt from the tractor shed.

But first, some coffee.

The forecast took a turn for the better today, so I got to spend most of it cleaning and fixing the Peaseblossom floorboards onto the joists I set up the other day. Was it yesterday? I have no idea.

Here’s how I left it a little while ago, before covering it up for the showers due for the next 24 hours. Pretty confident there’ll be a yurt sitting on this by Thursday evening, with guests due on Monday. Those lighter coloured boards are new this morning, from a place over near Castelnaud, to replace the ones I robbed out to finish the other platform a few days ago. Or whenever it was. It’s like a living Time Team around here. Only with metal hammers and cordless screwdrivers.

For anyone who wants a superbly accurate forecast that seems to be right most of the time, especially for the coming three days, check out accuweather. I’ve lived by this for years.

The last of the noggings went in a few minutes ago.

The first of the floorboards will go on after this short break…

UPDATE: Do not do it like this. See that square with the triangular bits on? On the left, you’ll see two joists that span the full distance, then smaller joists at right angles to it. I was cheating a bit here, using joists I already had. When you do it (as I did on another 18-foot floor), use joists that go the full span like those two on the left. What happened with this was that the noggings pulled out of the full-span joist near the centre and the floor dropped. OK, this was also because I was using nails that weren’t long enough. Next time, I’ll go for one nail and one screw to keep it in place.

Spent most of yesterday putting the joist frame for Peaseblossom together. Spot the silly mistake:

As with all of these constructions, there’s something that works really well and is deeply satisfying. Here’s an example of a four-way joint resting on an acacia post.

Those long, angled cuts take a while by hand. But are much easier since I started using a vise.

Todays it’s noggings and as much flooring as possible before some light rain forecast tomorrow. It’s going to be a bit of a week.

The first time we heard this sound was just incredible. It felt like we were living in paradise.

Now, ever year, it marks one of our favourite seasons. You’ll hear what I mean from about 12 seconds into this one minute in écovallée. This (shot on my reasonably priced, impact-resistant phone with a genuinely terrible picture) is the Golden Oriole, above our home yurts, hidden behind the spring greens.

Over the last couple of days, my attention has switched from the Peaseblossom platform to the Mustardseed platform.

We have guests staying in this yurt at the end of next week and the floor had moved around a bit during its winter under plastic. (BTW, the mice ate through the plastic and the deer ripped the plastic with their hooves, so this is not the ideal way of keeping it in good condition. I’m still not sure what the ideal way is.)

The best solution as I saw it was to lift the floor and re-lay it. (Which is what I was doing this time last year.) The day before yesterday, I got it to this point:

Then yesterday, after much noise (I’m nailing the boards down again this time), it got to this point…

And then we put the yurt frame and roof up, and added the wall this morning. You’ll have to take my word for this, as I didn’t stop to take a photo.

In our mid-to-late 40s, this kind of physical activity is not as easy as it was, and Things Are Going To Change. Watch this space for some HUGE news in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, I’ll post some video and keep you up to date with work as we put everything else back together for what promises to be our best summer ever!

This time last year I was rebuilding the Mustardseed platform. Now it’s time for the Peaseblossom platform, which I unmade a couple of weeks ago. This morning, it looked like this:

One of the problems we’ve had with this platform is that there hasn’t been enough room between the yurt and that cutaway at the back. Which makes it a bit of a nightmare when it comes to leaves gathering, mud splashing and various other things. So, I’m moving the whole platform away from the wall by a couple of feet.

Which means planting some acacia uprights.

The nearest useful tree was about 100 metres away, growing at a jaunty angle. I chose the one on the left…

…and cut my nine supports, which will all go about 45 cm into the ground.

As soon as I publish this, I’m off to strip some bark and pound the first post. No pressure, time-wise, but we do have a family staying in this yurt in less than a few weeks. Fortunately, the weather’s just turned perfect and will hopefully stay that way.