A woman who started living as a nomad in a homemade yurt in 2015 when she faced debts of £10K is now “happier then ever”. Briar Miller left her £400-a-month rented two-bedroom after the last of her three children moved out.
She was keen to live in a place surrounded by nature and had also been struggling financially. Now, she moves around the Welsh countryside every six months working as a horse groom and gardener after building a yurt which she takes with her.
Briar collects rainwater to drink and burns wood to keep warm when conditions get chilly. She also has a compost toilet, helping her avoid utility bills in the process, reports Wales Online.
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Briar said: “I am the happiest I have ever been. I feel at peace with who I am. I absolutely love it.
“I want to carry on living like this for as long as I can. The thought of having to live within walls is horrible. I feel really claustrophobic and stressed thinking of it.”
A £10,000 credit card debt helped lead Briar, who children are aged 35, 30 and 28, to move out into the wild. The debt had built up after she was forced to stop work for personal reasons and Briar said she has sympathy for people caught up in the cost of living crisis.
She said: “With the current energy crisis, I understand how families are feeling when they are stripped of choices. I feel very lucky, because I have been able to live this niche lifestyle and avoid this energy crisis, which is unbelievably difficult for so many.
“When I first moved into a yurt, it was a really tough time for me. While I was excited to be back in nature, I was struggling mightily with everything else.”
Briar took the plunge around Christmas in 2015 as she built her first yurt, although this fell down within a week. However, after a bit of tweaking, Briar says none of the yurts she's built since have collapsed.
She said: “The first yurt was about 12 feet in diameter. I knew how to make the structure, but only for festivals, when they only needed to last days. I was completely clueless.
“I haven’t had a collapse since then though, so I learned a lot that day about how to structure the poles. Being outdoors and living this way is all about learning. Even now I’m 55, I am still learning every single day.”
Before moving into a yurt, Briar had previously experienced the off-grid lifestyle with her children. She explained: “We lived in a cottage in Oxfordshire in a field with no electricity in the middle of nowhere. My children grew up there and I lived there for 20 years.
“We were pretty self-sufficient and I absolutely loved it. At the time I think my children loved it. They loved being in the countryside. You get a deep appreciation of nature. And you just learn how to survive with what you have.”
It was at the age of 19, Briar learned how to collect wood and rainwater and has picked up more skills since then. She likened herself to Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.
She said: “Since I was 19 I have been collecting rain water to drink and collecting wood to make a fire. I had to learn everything from scratch.
“There have been some really tough times but also really exciting times. I think modern living is downgrading people’s opinions of themselves and what they are capable of.”
Planning laws mean Briar needs to move every six months, but she has gotten used to this and can shift everything to a new site in two or three days. Some of the items in her yurt include a stove, sofa-bed and velvet curtains.
She described herself as a “hoarder” with “tons and tons of books” along with lots of clothes. Briar also said no two yurts are the same.
Briar added: “I have everything I need. The yurt is always very well decorated and I like to make it colourful with velvet curtains. The last few years I feel like I have really got it down to a fine art, although I get a bit stressed when I have to move.”
Building a yurt starts with Briar laying down a wooden platform to act as foundations before assembling the yurt using 90 wooden poles tied together. It also uses three layers of canvas, 15 duvets and then a dozen rugs for flooring
Briar said: “My yurt has lots of insulation, many rugs, and furniture. You need to pick a nice sunny day to move, and it takes two or three days.
“I can take it down and carry everything over and just put the canvas on in a day, but to move everything else takes a bit longer. I have to construct a platform each time to build it on, so I will pile on wooden pallets. I usually move a maximum of an hour away, just because I still have to work.”
A 240 watt solar panel and a leisure battery power the yurt, meaning Briar can charge her phone, letting her enjoy watching episodes of Star Trek regularly. Briar said waking up every morning to the sound of wildlife outside and being in some spectacular Welsh beauty spots makes it all worthwhile.
She added: “I’m looking out on a beautiful lake at the moment and I wake up every morning to birds twittering. It’s just stunning.
“I have really come to enjoy being in different places, I spend months and months in locations people never get to see. It’s pretty awesome. It’s just all so spectacular.”
Her children live around 15 minutes away from their mum's yurt and make regular visits there. Briar said: “My children all come to visit regularly and they often help me during moving time.
“They all think I’m the coolest mum because of how I live. They got bullied at school, though, for living an alternative lifestyle – although they kept it from me at the time – but that was difficult for them.”
She finished off by saying that she hopes to keep living a nomadic lifestyle for many years to come and has plans to grow her own sweetcorn and leeks. Briar said: “I feel like in the last seven years I have really learned more and more and pushed the boundaries of my resilience. I hope to retire by 60 and continue living in the yurt.
“I want to learn how to make baskets and become more and more self-sufficient. I want to grow more of my own food, all kinds of lovely vegetables. This is the life.”
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