Birch Cottage has a new website of its own

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Welcome 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 covered fire pit area with decorative lighting
Getting to grips with the garden

Getting to grips with the garden

  Our intrepid wwoof volunteers Samantha and Irene from Italy have arrived, and are getting to grips with our vegetable beds, which after a spell of very dry and then very wet weather, were growing increasingly full of weeds. Happily they have now tamed the...

We’re in Permaculture Magazine!

We’re in Permaculture Magazine!

Many thanks to Maddy Harland of Permaculture Magazine for running an article about Lackan Cottage Farm - we've already met several new people because of it, which is always a Good Thing. For those of you who aren't subscribers, get along...

And we’re back

And we’re back

After a frenetic June, and the success of our crowdfunding campaign, we took a couple of weeks to travel and visit family and friends, and begin to plan the next couple of months in earnest. The thrill of meeting our funding target came with the knowledge that we...

Materials wanted list

We have an ongoing wishlist of materials that will be needed here on site, so if anyone has any of the following they would like to part with, then please let us know. Rapid collection assured....Email lackancottage [at] riseup.net if you can help. Timber - 6x2, 4x2,...

Celebrating our solstice

Celebrating our solstice

As the sun set on the longest day of the year, we celebrated the midsummer solstice with good company and a fire (or two). The weather has been amazing this last few weeks, and it held out for us in fine style. Here the sun sets over Crabtree Hill, and as it did we...

A flavour of what is to come

A flavour of what is to come

The prospect of a place on our one day courses has proved very popular amongst our crowdfunding supporters, so we thought we'd give a flavour of the sorts of things that we will be doing on those courses. The idea is to give people a choice, and we've several lined...