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.
Forest Gardens
Martin Crawford's forest garden is truly an amazing thing, and we hope to visit one day. Enjoy.
GIY gathering
This week we hosted a GIY get together, before which we had to undertake some serious tidying, as nature has been busy in the last few weeks. The sun shone, and some 20 people came and we spent a very pleasant evening swapping plants, stories and cake....
Midsummer
Midsummer is already upon us, and to mark the occasion, we have erected our own standing stone, which looks toward the mountains with which it shares its roots. We will mark important occasions through the year with a circle of stones. The granite here weathers...
Loo with a view (and a living roof)
When we moved in to Lackan Cottage Farm a year ago, we inherited a variety of concrete and tin sheds, none of which were (or are) terribly pretty. Eventually we'll replace or clad them all in timber, and we decided to make a start with the outside toilet. We wanted...
Horses and permaculture
I've been fortunate enough to be around horses for 30 years now, and very early on, decided that horses would be my career. I'm ashamed to say that it is only now that I am getting to grips with pasture management. From a permaculture point of view, horses seem to...
Life in the tunnel
At long last all the beds in the big polytunnel are filled, and I think we officially have the oddest tunnel layout in the land. The centre beds with a circular path and keyhole beds in the corners are designed to maximise the available edge in the tunnel, and...