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.
Bornay wind turbine upgrade
So after years of gradually building up our renewable system, we've definitely got to the point where its perfectly capable of supplying us with enough power, but the thing about building a system as you go along is that its a learning process, and sometimes you use...
Making the most of the light
We're into the part of the year that is hardest for those living off grid, when the days are getting increasingly short, the sun doesn't appear that often, and when he does, he's pretty low in the sky. Having been terribly casual about the whole energy thing all...
Being prepared
The typical image of 'preppers' is of heavily armed Americans living in compounds in the mountains, with stockpiles of food and ammunition, or their close relatives the 'survivalists' who are kitted out ready to live in shelters in the woods, making their own clothes...
There’s so much to do!
As we approach Samhain - Halloween, and the midpoint of the latest lockdown or 'extended half term' as it's sold to us, we've managed to get busy in the garden. Our apple crop this year was woeful, partly due to some odd frosts at bad times, and partly because half...
Wind turbine upgrade
Right at the start of the year, Gerry from Kerry was kind enough to give us a working Bornay turbine like the (then broken) one we have, as well as a 15 metre mast to put it on. Our mast is 9 metres which seems pretty tall when you're near it, but in the world of wind...
Let there be light
For the last eight years we've been fervently letting everything grow, more or less unrestricted. So for the first time this summer it became really apparent that it was time to rein things in a bit, as the vegetable garden was becoming darker and darker, and just...