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.
Strawbale rendering part 1..
Yesterday we began the process of rendering the strawbale walls by applying a coat of clay slip (just a runny clay and water mix) to the surface of the bales. Messy work, as transferring it from bucket to wall involves about half ending up on the floor, but it will...
Straw at last
Now that the floor is fixed down, we've been able to get on and get the strawbales in. First, wooden spikes made of willow are driven into holes in the floor - Then the first layer of bales is placed onto the spikes which prevent them from moving around....
Getting creative
Pargeting isn't a word you hear very often, but it's a wonderful technique that involves making raised designs in (commonly) lime or earth plasters. From the very start, this is something we've really wanted to have a go at, and here are some lovely examples...
Douglas comes to stay
Well at last we managed to sell enough things to pay for some flooring in the build. Clarke Cunningham supplied us with some rather fine Douglas Fir boards, which look great, although they aren't fixed down yet. They're windproofed from underneath, and well...
Making connections
One of the things that really cheers us up is when we hear from people who've stayed, or maybe just come across the blog and email to say 'Hi, we're out here'. Here's Lyra with Clare, who came to volunteer for a week recently, and was kind enough to send a...
The morning after
No amount of careful preparation can protect against damage like this, and we woke up to find that a huge piece of our largest tree had come down. Amazingly it missed both chicken houses, and the tipi poles, but our poor tree is looking rather sorry this morning, as...