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.
Winter skies
Midwinter is now only weeks away, and our day is finishing ever earlier. This evening brought us some dramatic skies, and the promise of a nice day tomorrow, perhaps. I am off to collect some more hens, and our first rooster, from the other side of Strangford Lough,...
Let there be light
One of the reasons that many people are put off installing renewable technologies such as solar PV is that in order to generate enough to power a typical house, you need a lot of it, at fairly vast expense. Being simple peasant folk, that's not an option open to us,...
Our first Wwoofers, and a new polytunnel
This weekend has been a busy one indeed. We had our first wwoofers - Andrew McMurray, founder of the Drumlin Wind Cooperative, and Mick McEvoy, Belfast representative for GIY Ireland, both inspirational guys in their own right, who came to help put up our first...
The Bear Child
Rima and Tom have been on their travels, storytelling as they go. We thought that the best way to spend this Samhain evening would be sit in front of the fire and listen to the telling of The Bear Child. A fine story it is too and here is a chance to hear it...
We are now WWOOF hosts
We have registered as WWOOF hosts, and now appear on both the Wwoof Ireland and Wwoof UK websites. Already we are busy organising volunteers from all over the world to come and help out here on the farm. Rather fittingly though, our very first WWOOFer is from here in...
Bus conversions on’t telly
Suddenly bus conversions are all the rage, as evidenced by 'George Clarke's Amazing Spaces' on Channel 4. A lovely bus gets converted, if you can take all the C4 jeopardy, and there's another good old Lambourn horsebox that is being let too. Still think ours can hold...