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.
Weathering the storm
So the first proper storm of autumn is coming tonight, and rather than wait for mother nature to do her thing, and then clean up the mess afterwards, we decided to be more organised this year and take down the tipi, wind turbine and firepit shelter, just in...
Meet the boss
Today it was time to get cracking and make cob - lots of it. Lyra might only be two, but between us we used nearly a ton of sand in the mix, and yet we aren't half way yet. Lyra is particularly keen on working with her trowel, and is genuinely quite good at laying and...
Lighting the rocket mass heater
Today we pushed on, built a brick support around the base of the firebrick burner, - above, and then backfilled all the gaps with perlite and a clay mix to thoroughly insulate the fire itself, which we want to burn as hot as possible. The clay mix is a...
Rocket mass heater progress
Having tried (and failed) to get clay soil cleaned up enough to make smooth clay mortar, I just went out and bought some clean clay, which was thirty quid well spent, and allowed the burner for the rocket mass heater to get built. Several of you will be...
Fluffers does it again
The unstoppable broody Fluffers has done it again, this time vanishing to hatch 8 healthy chicks, returning to parade them around the place today. She's perfected the knack of sashaying about with them underneath her, which is quite a sight, and here they are enjoying...
A building we will go..
Well. here it is - or the outside at least. Six weeks of frantic building activity is at an end. There's something very satisfying to go from a pile of timber - below - to a wonderful sturdy, weathertight building. We've had help from all sorts of amazing people,...