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.
A riot of colour
This is Robbie, our magnificent Welsummer rooster - isn't he an amazing colour? At this time of year there is so much to look at you hardly know where to begin. Poppies are everywhere, and more are coming - and just in time for the warm...
Painting with clay
As you can see, the new room is coming on now, and we are on the final layers of clay paint, having gone through progressively finer mixes until we are now using just clay, fine sand, wheat paste, and occasionally some colouring - in this case tumeric. The...
Welcome to new visitors
Welcome - there are many new folk visiting the site this last couple of days so we thought we would say hello, and explain briefly what we are doing here at Lackan Cottage Farm. In essence, we're attempting to use the best of new and old technology and knowledge to...
Sunday earth plastering crew
Today we were pleased to welcome old friends and new - the Freckle magazine crew of Lynn, Hannah and Mick, with Andrew and Liam. Together we earth plastered the last of the walls, and gained some mountains and geese, as well as applying some finish coat plaster to the...
Earth plastering day one – amazing progress
Saturday was the first of our earth plastering days, and we made amazing progress - the first scratch coat nearly complete on the west wall, and this amazing tree too. Can't wait to see how our Sunday crew get on, and fingers crossed for good weather...
Green woodworking at Lackan
Introduction to Green Woodworking at Lackan Cottage Farm from Lackan Cottage Farm on Vimeo. This weekend saw our latest 'Introduction to Green Woodworking' course with Steve Ryan. Blessed with wonderful weather, our participants made a range of items on the pole...