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 and horses. 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.
Birch Cottage Gift Vouchers
The ideal present – a Birch Cottage gift voucher. Available in £10, £20, £50 or £100 these can be redeemed against the cost of any booking at Birch Cottage made through our website during 2018. Just quote the code when you book. We are selling these through our Lackan Cottage Farm online shop, where you can pay securely online using a debit or credit card, or paypal.
Talking about building restoration on the telly
Today we had the pleasure of welcoming the crew from Animo TV, and presenter (and architect) Hugh Wallace, as part of filming for a new RTE series about restoring old buildings. One of the restorations they are following is a cottage similar to ours, and so they came...
Off grid wind turbine repairs
When we heard that a hurricane was coming to Ireland, we were convinced that we were terribly well prepared. As seasoned off grid people we really should be. In the event, the wind here wasn't as bad as we expected. Unfortunately we still didn't get away without some...
When Paddy met Sean. Round 2.
Poor old Paddy. He woke up on Monday morning with what can at best be classed as terrible constipation. Horses are trickle feeders, and their gut relies on a small steady intake of food to keep everything moving. Colic, usually down to impactions or eating something that has decided to disagree with them, is never a good thing in horses and ponies, and down the years we’ve lost one or two to such things. Hence when it appeared that Paddy had spent a whole night rolling around his stable in discomfort, we called up Sean the vet immediately.
Our first grape harvest
We had a surprise grape harvest this year – it is only the second year we’ve had grapes at all, and it was incredible to part the undergrowth and find so many. Very tasty they were too, but we realised that we’d have to do something with them as there were far too many to eat. Luckily our friend Ingrid had lent us her steamer-juicer. This incredible thing basically juices most things without a load of messing around removing stalks and stems.
Better firewood storage
This is one of thoseobvious things that I should have thought of a lot sooner. Our woodstore is on the back of the cottage with a door that allows you to get in from inside the house. It has slatted walls to let air circulate, but its always had a solid roof because...