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.
Falling off the woody wagon
I feel like a smoker who is trying to give up and who has fallen off the wagon. Although our range isn't really suited to wood, and is 50+ years old, a few alterations and it has burned pretty well, with one slight snag - the quantities that it consumes. Admittedly...
Poll
It is on this day every year that I remember Poll, my most excellent horse friend of many years. I'll tell Lyra about him.
Get a taste of the Good Life
All you need to enjoy a break from the connected world is here. The house truck features a unique upcycled pallet wood interior, well equipped kitchen, wood powered shower, and of course, an outside compost loo with a view. Harriet even has her own decking area where you can sit and admire the view, and is powered by solar electricity.
Small is Successful
For those readers who are also smallholders or have small farms, this is an incredibly useful read.Small is Successful - a report put together by the Ecological Land CoOperative - examines eight smallholdings with land-based businesses on 10 acres or less. The...
Wood gathering rights
I had an interesting dilemma this week as I did my regular trawl of the woods for dry kindling and fallen trees. We own half of a block of woodland that has been largely untouched for many years - being old bog it is seen as being of little value, and not worth...