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.
Permaculture Gathering
Well this weekend was the All Ireland Permaculture Gathering, held at Cloughjordan Eco Village in Tipperary. The whole thing was really interesting, and despite almost continuous rain for the entire weekend, I had a great time and now that I’m back am itching to get on with all sorts of projects.
Two weeks of wwoofing
It has been a busy month so far here at the farm – Felix has returned to us from Germany for a second time, and last week we welcomed Uni from California. Much wood was chopped and stacked, and the woodstore is almost completely full – it is good to be able to see the woodyard again.
The big tidy
Blog posts have been a bit thin on the ground lately, mainly because I've been running around like a man with his hair on fire. Our little cottage is complete, we're just gathering up all the things that Tourism NI like you to have, and having friends and relatives...
Offcuts
Took a trip up to Ballytrim Sawmill with Brian the other day to pick up larch flooring, and spotted a huge pile of oak offcuts - the remainder of a big timber frame. They are wonderful pieces of wood, and so my search for bedside tables is over. Several hours of...
A tale of two companies
A couple of weeks ago we had an amazing electrical storm, which knocked out our broadband, and also part of our power setup, called the CCGX, which displays information about the whole system and sends it to the outside world.
Open day success
There’s nothing quite like the promise of visitors to get a load of jobs done, and the week leading up to our open day was no exception. Paving laid, beds cleared, weeds thinned, and some serious tidying up. The weather smiled on us the entire time, and our worrying was put aside as a great crowd turned up on the day.