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Yak Farm is home to Jeff Byers and Carita Simons, and is located on 40+ acres of post oak forest in central Texas.
We bought Yak Farm in 1996—two years after we moved to Austin so Jeff could take a job at Sematech. We spent weekends camping on our land, which at the time had no utilities and few neighbors. Over the past several years, we've built a small house and woodworking shop. Our current project is a guesthouse/retreat for Carita, referred to casually as the Bathhouse.
Why Yak?
As you've probably guessed, there are no real yak here—it’s too hot for them in Texas. Though we both work in high tech fields (Jeff as a photolithography research scientist and Carita as a technical writer), we tend to be luddites in our personal lives. The name Yak Farm came from Carita--as a graduate student, she often became tired of civilized life and would threaten to run off and become a Yak herder in the Andes (or wherever Yak actually reside—being a horrible geography student, she wasn't quite sure). Anyway, Yak Farm became in her mind an ideal place without people or gadgets (animals were ok!)—where she could live in peace and quiet. And so it is.
Directions
Here's a map in Adobe .pdf