Birch Cottage has a new website of its own
Visit the Birch Cottage website to bookWelcome to Lackan Cottage Farm
We’re Steve and Claire Golemboski-Byrne, we live here off grid with our daughter, our dog, cats, horses and bees. We make all our own energy using wind and solar, grow as much of our own food as we can (it varies widely) and have used permaculture design principles to help us create a great place to live.
Here on the website you’ll find stories about the projects we’ve undertaken – what works, what doesn’t. You can come stay in our guest cottage – Birch Cottage and we will show you round, or maybe you just want to find out how to do some of this stuff. Either way, welcome.
Off Grid Camper
This is my 1974 Citroen HY camper. Since my original post, she's had an awful lot of work, and is now able to be used fully off grid. The 200ah lithium leisure battery powers the camper and is charged by a combination of the engine, when the van is on the move, and a...
The hobbity bit
When I say that 2025 wasn't a good year, I forget that somehow we managed to finish what was really quite a big job. It all started when out of frustration at the never ending rodent problem down at the wood store end of our living room, I decided that the way to go...
Meet Minou
Something that was on my list for last year and which got moved to this year is to visit some of the many folk that I've supplied with energy systems, or simply advice, or met along the way, and record their stories, in writing, in pictures and maybe video, with the...
Rebuilding in 2026
Well, its been a while. I'll gloss over the absence of posts for the last while and continue as if nothing happened. 2025 (and really 2024) was a bad year - my mum was ill for a long time, and died at the end of May 2025, and then the rest of the year vanished. When...
Looking forward to 2026 at Lackan Cottage Farm
Aaaand - we're back. Let's just pretend that the yawning gap between the last post and this one didn't happen. A lot has happened here at Lackan and now that 2026 is upon us, it feels like we are moving into a new phase. Anyone who has followed us for a long time will...
Hedge time
Something we learned the hard way is that it's great to let some things grow wild, but that others really do need managing. In particular, hedges. Our early years here were marked by a pretty militant approach to minimal intervention, which firstly went down badly...