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.
Measuring, measuring
After all the hoo-ha, storm Frank didn’t hit too hard, and everything remains standing. Seeing as we have so much in the way of weather here, I asked Santa for a weather station and she has obliged, so now I have even more things to measure, and finally I know what it takes for the wind turbine to do its thing.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap
Well, our climate chickens are fairly coming home to roost tonight, as storm Frank rages around us. Destructive winds are raging, huge amounts of rain falling, and we genuinely don’t know what will still be standing come the morning.
Season’s greetings and a huge thank you
Midwinter is upon us, the weather continues to play tricks – outside a sycamore tree is starting to bud, and the temperature remains in double digits while the fifth storm of the winter has begun to rage. All very strange.
Wind anyone?
Storm Desmond is upon us, and the wind is fairly howling around the house, but for the first time, it is howling outside and not inside. I am delighted to announce that the floor repair worked a treat, and the filled-in floor in the classroom is warm and draught free.
Who turned the sun off?
Weeks like the one we've just had are an off-gridder's nightmare. After some lovely cold autumnal days, it is now seven days since we saw anything approaching sunshine, and output from our solar PV is negligible, to put it kindly. It is weather like this that leads to...
Fixing the floor
Usually I post about the things that have gone right, but we are on a learning curve, and things often don't work out first time around. The floor in the new build is one such case. After much deliberating, and mainly due to budget constraints, I put in a suspended...