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 Great Weekend of Plastering..
The plastering continues, and we've now finished the living room, most the kitchen, and some of the hall. Huge thanks to Mark and Jim for coming to help and working really, really long hours over the weekend, and doing some of the really annoyingly unreachable bits of...
Lots of progress
It's amazing how a couple of days without rain make such a difference - suddenly we are making great progress. More of the fruit bushes are making their way down to the field, and out of pots, (at last, we've been carting them around for an age), and the compost heap...
Hot water!!
This weekend, I got the rest of the solar panel built up on the roof, and almost immediately you could see the benefits. Even though the sun has only appeared for a few minutes, the water down in the tank is heating up nicely. Can't wait for a bit of decent weather to...
Reusing the bog oak roof timbers
The little platform above the living room needed some bannisters to keep people from plunging to their doom, and I wanted to re-use some of the wood from the original thatched roof, so here it is. The rails are made from lengths of bog oak that was used as laths under...
Home on the range
After many years of sitting cold and quiet, and having been tampered with to burn oil, our woodburning range had a proper fire burning inside it, and suddenly the house began to come alive. The sounds of the fire, and of the water bubbling through the pipes gave the...
Ceilings at last
At last, we're getting the ceilings in, and the place is starting to look like a house at last. It is amazing what a difference it makes, and the rooms seem to change size as we work. Here's the newly insulated kitchen - Tomorrow we'll be completing the plumbing, and...