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.
The finer points of firewood
When you rely on wood for your heating and cooking, you realise that there is a vast amount of knowledge that was once common but is now largely forgotten, all of which is really quite vital to your success. Our first year has been a steep learning curve, but we're...
Can you help the Happy Pig?
[youtube height="480" width="600"]ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qopqYjIbVM[/youtube] Mark Boyle, known for his writing about living without money, has settled in Ireland, on a 3 acre smallholding, and hopes to create a free space for learning, creativity,...
I Am Alive
If you enjoyed 'Live before you die', then you'll love 'I Am Alive', again from Dreamtime Films. [vimeo height="480" width="600"]http://vimeo.com/32915202[/vimeo]
A Million Trees in One Day
Last year we took part in the million trees in one day initiative, which very ambitiously hoped to do what it said on the tin. Technically this year it should be called 'The rest of one million trees in one day' but the sentiment is the right one. Some time in the...
When you gotta go, you gotta go…
We love composting toilets. Most of the time. As three quarters of domestic water useage goes to flushing the loo, composters are an easy way to drastically reduce water consumption, and in return you get some useful compost. As a society we have become used to our...
The wood fuelled home
It has to be said, our lives revolve around wood, and as a fuel trees are hard to beat. They lock up carbon, are completely renewable, and have multiple uses. Trees are key to our approach, both in providing habitat here at Lackan, and as a sustainable source of fuel....