Eleven Women, Nine Dogs, Not Much Drama (and No Guys)

New York Times

6 days ago

Eleven women live at The Bird's Nest, a tiny-house village in East Texas, a remote spot where the hay bales look as big as school buses and roads have numbers instead of names. The women, nine of whom are retired and range in age from about 60 to 80 years old, share the explicit goal of keeping one another company into old age, possibly until death. The Bird's Nest declares itself a women-only community, and the inhabitants broadly agree that, at this age, women are easier long-term companions than men.
Most of The Bird's Nest women are single — as are half of American women 65 and older. Most are also divorced, one has never been married and one, a widow, has 'the perfect relationship' with a man who lives out of state. Among them, they have 21 children and two dozen grandchildren who are scattered across the country from Washington State to Arkansas. Nine dogs live on the property: 'our babies,' they call them. For a while, the women kept a turkey named Turk, a goose named Mother and three ducks. But over time, they found they couldn't keep up with the poop. When Turk developed an aggressive streak, they decided the birds had to go.
'I loved that turkey,' said Robyn Yerian, wistfully.
Yerian is The Bird's Nest property owner, a 70-year-old extrovert with cropped, bleached hair and a cheerful demeanor. I was sitting with her and her neighbors in 'the kitchen' at The Bird's Nest, which is not a kitchen at all but a large, open-air portico that functions as a community lounge. Strung with twinkle lights and dangling with ceiling fans and painted signs — 'Like a Band of Gypsies We Go Down the Highway' — it's where the women gather to eat, chat and play cards late into the night. Nearby, raised vegetable beds were bursting with zucchini. The mobile tiny houses, some encircled with sunflowers, resembled fairy-tale abodes.
Who made the decision to get rid of the birds? I asked.
The others chimed in. In addition to making a mess, the birds were antagonizing the dogs and, sometimes, the people.
'We had a discussion,' said Cheryl Huff firmly. She is a former first-grade teacher, Yerian's closest friend and an original member of The Bird's Nest.
'There were rumblings,' Yerian conceded. She understood. Sometimes Turk slept in her lap, but her fondness for the birds was not shared by all. 'It's not just my house. You know? '
I traveled to The Bird's Nest in mid-July because I had been searching for real-life examples of a fantasy I have had since my 20s. After child-rearing and a career, my friends and I would buy a big house somewhere affordable and cohabitate the way we had done in college: cooking and laughing and hanging out, chipping in for accessibility ramps and health-help as needed. (Less considered were the lifestyle preferences of our then-hypothetical partners.) This fantasy, or versions of it — aging among female friends — is rampant among the women I know. It circulates on Facebook groups; we share news articles about this community in London, that one in France. Phil Levin, the founder of Live Near Friends, a Bay Area start-up that facilitates group living, said half the inquiries he receives are from women over 50.
The women of The Bird's Nest are not the richest of American women, nor the poorest. They are retired from administrative and helping jobs: teacher, nanny, pricing specialist for a grocery store chain, data analyst, customer service agent, legal secretary, home health aide. Two were laid off at around age 60, cutting short their earning years. The wage gap between men and women — in which women earn, on average, 82 cents for every dollar earned by men and which widens with age — persists into retirement. According to the AARP, 64 percent of American women ages 50 to 64 who are not retired and not married have less than $50,000 in retirement savings, compared to 52 percent of men. Women's Social Security payout is, on average, 20 percent less than men's.
Two lesbians, married, live at The Bird's Nest (one identifies as a 'tree hugger'), as does one Republican gun owner; one Bible-believing Christian conservative; and several women who call themselves 'military brats.' They have been through a lot, but not any more or less than other women: cancer, infertility, addiction, mental health issues, domestic abuse. A few have grown children living nearby and enjoy hosting grandchild sleepovers, annual trips to Ireland, fishing vacations in Michigan. Other adult children live at an emotional distance, painful reminders of parenting regrets. The late-night sessions in the kitchen often resemble free group therapy, observed Trish Earixson, one half of the married couple.
The women disagree about a lot of things, especially politics. It's Texas. Inside their tiny homes, one woman may be writing postcards to swing states and another may be studying her Bible, but they have agreed not to argue about any of it in their common spaces.
'We say we respect each other,' Huff continues, but 'it's hard.'
They've made the choice to be in this together, which means that when Katharine Wickham falls off her deck while stomping down a Styrofoam box, the others will drive her to urgent care. And when Huff has knee replacement, her neighbors will pick up pain medication and bring food to her door. 'We are at the age where a lot of things that we used to think were so important don't matter anymore, and we just let a lot go,' Huff said.
All of the women agree that their first rule, unwritten yet strictly and collectively enforced, is the one Yerian and Huff came up with at the beginning, back in 2022: no drama. Or at least, not much. No one at The Bird's Nest 'gets their endorphins from stirring things up,' said Huff.
Staying Out of the Nursing Home
Yerian would not attribute the founding of The Bird's Nest to any kind of 'vision.' She is an act-first, think-later kind of person: 'When I think of 'vision,' I think, you have an intention. You write it down on paper.' This community, she said, evolved from a group of hard-working women forced to meet a need: to live independently as long as possible with little to no financial cushion. 'My goal is really to keep people out of nursing homes,' she told me. A 2019 study supports her hunch: Women with more social ties have a 10 percent longer life span and 41 percent higher odds of surviving to age 85 than women with fewer ties, regardless of their demographic characteristics or health conditions.
Yerian did not even start putting money into a 401(k) until she was 50. She had been a young stay-at-home mother, dealing with a disastrous marriage, before taking up a job at Clorox, in Dallas, where she worked for more than 20 years. She bought a small house and earned a good living. But by age 60, she still could not comfortably retire. To preserve her independence into old age, she knew she had to reduce her expenses while also stretching her savings.
As she watched an episode of 'Tiny House Nation' a decade ago, Yerian wondered whether 'going tiny,' as the enthusiasts say, might address her long-term affordability problem. On impulse, she attended a tiny-home jamboree in Colorado Springs, and after touring 50 tinies in a weekend, she was sold.
She bought her tiny home for $55,000 in 2017. It is customized to accommodate a full-size oven, a sleeping loft and an heirloom cabinet that holds her mother's stemware. Then Yerian bought 5.5 unincorporated acres in Hopkins County, had the property zoned as an R.V. park, installed water, electric and sewage lines and 14 10-by-30-foot concrete pads. Her vision was taking shape. She would establish herself here, earning passive income by renting plots to fellow tiny-home owners. She sold her house and cashed out her 401(k). She spent $150,000 on The Bird's Nest — everything she had.
The buyer's remorse set in almost immediately. When she visited her investment, she saw a scorched piece of ground so remote she couldn't even find someone to mow it. 'It would just be so overgrown and depressing,' she said. If she was really honest with herself, this place — 70 miles from Dallas, 20 miles from Sulphur Springs, with patchy cell service and little shade — was not anyone's retirement ideal, not even her own.
But Yerian was out of options. She moved her tiny house to The Bird's Nest in late December 2021. Huff joined her, towing her own, even tinier house to Yerian's plot. Initially, they had no internet and no postal address. 'It was like 'Little House on the Prairie.' Literally,' Huff said
How did you spend your time? I asked Huff.
'Robyn and I dug so many holes,' she replied.
Their idea was to create a sense of safety and enclosure on the land with planted barriers. They tried bamboo. They tried Sky Pencil Hollies and crepe myrtles. But 'gardening here is a war, not a hobby,' as Huff told me; finally, they settled for a wood picket fence and stained it black. Still, no one came. Huff watched her friend grow despondent, she said. 'She had a dream. And it wasn't going to be that dream. And she had to adjust.' The 'women-only' concept occurred to Yerian only after she hosted a women's power tools skills workshop at The Bird's Nest. Women traveled from other states and camped out in tents. 'We started talking around the fire pit and, I said, 'What if I did this as an all women's community?' And it was unanimous: 'Oh my gosh, that would be awesome.''
Then the YouTube mini-doc series 'Tiny Home Expedition' posted a 23-minute video about The Bird's Nest. In it, Yerian gave a tour of the grounds — the storm shelter, the fire pit, Turk — talked about affordability and described The Bird's Nest as 'a community of women empowering women.' In some shots she's wearing a 'Pro Roe 1973' T-shirt. She looked straight at the camera, her hands in her back pockets. 'When there's a bunch of women together, you laugh. You don't care what you look like. You just. Exist.' Her phone started ringing.
I had been pondering a question: If so many women share my retirement fantasy, why don't more people act on it? According to the AARP, more than half of Americans over 50 say they'd be willing to live with a friend. But by 65, more than a quarter of American women live alone; by 75, that number is 43 percent.
So I called the cohousing eminence and architect Kathryn McCamant, who has consulted on more than 50 cohousing communities. Retiring with friends is 'almost impossible,' she said. She tried to reframe my fantasy. You don't want to retire with your existing friends, she said. Over a lifetime, these friendships grow out of sync. Friends get tied down to partners, children, parents, jobs, neighborhoods. They have different levels of financial ability and need.
Far better, McCamant advised, for one or two strong-willed people to articulate a vision, then recruit other like-minded people to join them. That's a win-win, she pointed out. The old 'fabulous friends' retain their cherished status and the new ones suit the current situation.
That's what happened to Yerian. She has new 'instant friends, best friends at 65,' she told me. 'I never saw these people before in my life, and now I can't imagine them not being here every day.'
At The Bird's Nest, we sat around in the kitchen in our sandals, the mood bawdy and light. Within one hour, we were talking about men. Specifically, we were talking about the group's stance on men sleeping on the property overnight. This was a women's community, but did that exclude builders and delivery workers? Sons? Ex-partners? App dates? Yerian had started pondering the question after someone asked it on The Bird's Nest Facebook page: 'Are male friends allowed to stay the night? What happens if someone who is settled there wants to get married?'
Yerian had always regarded 'women only' as a guideline rather than a hard-and-fast rule. They don't hate men, she repeatedly said. Many have beloved sons and grandsons. They just expect men to respect their autonomy, competence and intelligence, Yerian said — by which she means not boss them around, not instruct them in how to use power tools or balance the load in a truck. People frequently ask Yerian, 'How are you going to survive without men?' This rankles her. 'There is no 'you're doing it wrong' here,' she wrote on The Bird's Nest website. 'We just try again until we accomplish the task.'
But when she put the sex-and-dating question to the group, she was 'shocked,' she said. In the kitchen, she hooted with laughter as she recollected the conversation they'd had the night before, over cards. She is open to the notion of companionship and sex, at least occasionally, and imagined the others would be, too.
But they all said no. No way. No men overnight, ever, for any reason. 'If you're dating somebody, they have a home, right? You go there. If you need to get laid, go,' said Sherry Moore, who moved to The Bird's Nest from Dallas in June 2024. Group laughter erupted. Huff joined in. 'All our houses are on wheels,' she said. If someone wants to live with a man, there are other places to go. She waved at the infinite space beyond their fence.
The laughing petered out. Obviously, there are safety concerns. It would be impossible to vet every man who wanted to stay the night. But also, men change the tone. (That's what Yerian tells them when they call to inquire about living there.) When men enter a group, women stop talking intimately and about certain things, Huff said.
Like what? I asked.
'That you pee when you sneeze?' Huff responded.
The laughter in the kitchen flared again. They can talk about menopause and childbirth, they said. They can choose not to wear a bra. Moore declared that after a lifetime of relationships, she's not ruling men out, she's just not that interested. 'I don't need to date anymore,' she said to the group. 'I'm 65 years old and I've had all the best sex I'm going to have. It's not going to get better than that.'
The Candidate Interview
Katrina Wortham is the latest resident of The Bird's Nest. She arrived after the Fourth of July weekend after being laid off, at 61, from her job of 38 years. In 2020, she was transferred from Memphis to Dallas. Her second husband didn't move with her, and Wortham said she 'read the writing on the wall.' They are now divorced. She had been saving for retirement since she was young and thought, 'I'm not willing to share that with anybody at this stage in my life. I've worked 38 years for it. It's mine.'
Wortham was subjected to The Bird's Nest interview process, which has evolved over time into a hourslong group share. Yerian and her neighbors interview each new candidate for 'fit,' assessing them for self-sufficiency and resourcefulness. As a community, they are interdependent, but each member stands on her own. 'I can't take in desperate people,' Yerian told me. 'That means that I've got to fill some kind of niche for them that I'm not willing to.'
As Wortham was speaking to Yerian in the kitchen, she was overwhelmed to see all the other women emerging from their tiny homes, en masse, with their dogs, to join them. Number two unofficial rule at The Bird's Nest: You must like dogs.
Wortham told the group how alone she had been in Dallas. 'I lived in that apartment for five years, and probably only met a neighbor the last year and a half,' she told me by phone. So she was more than ready for 'the camaraderie' of The Bird's Nest, she said. She has put a deposit on a deluxe tiny home (ten feet wide, with ample custom built-ins for her crafting supplies), which will cost her $150,000, and sees it as a chance finally to get what exactly she wants in life: a brand-new, mortgage-free 'forever home' that won't need constant maintenance and cleaning. When she told her brother about the interview experience, he warned her, 'Watch out, it could be a cult.'
These neighbors can be chatty, and Wortham is accustomed to her solitude. So she was relieved to learn about unofficial rule number three. 'If you're in your house, they leave you alone. But if you are outside, you are fair game,' she reiterated. 'And it's turned out that way so far.'
Conflict Over Cats
When Trish Earixson suggested to her wife, Kim, that they move to The Bird's Nest from a historic town in northern Illinois, Kim said, 'you're flipping crazy.' The heat, the isolation — it all takes getting used to, as do the interpersonal dynamics.
The electric front gate is a source of perpetual tension. For safety reasons, Yerian is 'a stickler' about keeping it closed, as she put it, but each of the other residents can open it with her own clicker. When through miscommunication strangers find their way onto the property, or when the dogs are at risk of escaping, Yerian can 'come unglued,' as Huff said, and sensitive members of the village can feel her frustration.
Recycling is a sore point — 'nobody wants to recycle,' Yerian told me — as are the four resident cats. They must stay indoors, another unofficial rule of The Bird's Nest. Otherwise, they use people's gardens as a litter box. But as much as Yerian reminds certain cat owners of this, the cats still prowl, and other residents object — primarily Huff, the main gardener. In the past, she has confronted the offending owner, even threatening to take action against the cat.
As Huff explained it in the kitchen, this is what 'no drama' means: no whisper campaigns, no sulking or stewing. A resident with an interpersonal problem has two choices: tolerate it or address it. 'If I go to somebody and say, 'We need to work something out so I'm not upset about it,' then we will work something out. Everybody here would at least attempt to make me happy, like I would do for them, ' she said. The cat-owner bought a screened-in porch for her cats — a catio — and Huff was grateful for her consideration.
In the kitchen, Yerian looks around at what she's built with something like joy and bewilderment. The women have prepared a medley of summer salads and homemade zucchini bread for lunch, and we are sitting with paper plates in our laps. 'You've unintentionally created an intentional community,' said Kim Earixson to Yerian.
In conversations after my visit, Yerian described the burden she feels. These women have moved from all over the country to settle here, and she feels responsible for their happiness.
Huff and Yerian frequently discuss Yerian's role. Is she a landlord, charging $450 a month for a concrete pad, water and septic? Or is she more of a counselor, a guide — 'a hostess,' as Huff would say. Yerian hears the logic of Huff's position: the tenants are paying for their spot and utilities, not the sense of belonging. But it's the belonging that matters to Yerian. So she makes the rounds every day, tending to everyone — to Wickham, who's more solitary, and Wortham, who's new. She surveys the crowd: Who wants to go to berry picking, to Walmart, to IHOP? Who would enjoy an aboveground pool? Where will they build the new chicken coop?
Yerian sat with one leg tucked under her, her tattooed fingers around a water bottle that said 'Love Not War.' 'Nothing against any of you guys,' she said, contemplatively, 'but sometimes I think, now that it's all kind of come together, OK, now what?'
She continued. 'Am I going to do this forever? Is this what I've got?'
In chorus the women answered, 'It better be.' And: 'Yes.'
Read by Lisa Miller
Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.