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 end of winter (almost)
Well, for a while there we thought that spring had sprung, and so it would seem did the snowdrops. After what seemed like a long winter, suddenly there is a dash to get all the jobs done before spring arrives properly (whatever happened to hibernation?). For...
Low Impact Development – in Northern Ireland?
In theory, low impact building is something that you hope people would welcome: low cost shelter that uses minimal resources, that people can put together themselves, and which doesn't stand out like a sore thumb in the landscape. It could be cheap to heat, to run,...
Welcome to the new website
Well folks, after much late night toiling, here it is - our new website and blog. We've been with blogger for years now, but the time has come when we need more than it can offer, especially now that we're a business and have volunteers and visitors coming to...
One Million Trees In One Day
27th April 2013 One Million Trees in One Day is a charity, not-for-profit, cross border, community and environmental initiative which will plant a million young native trees at many different sites across both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in twenty...
Digging in the dirt
Two thirds of the way through Jean-Baptiste and Marie-Josephine's visit, and we've made amazing progress. Paths laid, 450 trees planted, new water pipes installed to the stables and outhouse, all the old rubble from the house levelled, tonnes of firewood cut, and now...
The Great Planting
Well at last the rain has stopped, we collected our tiny trees, from Tony at NI Farm Forestry, a mountain of cardboard from Toals furniture in Rathfriland, and after a couple of hours of fencing, set to planting the first block of trees. 0.2 hectare doesn't sound a...