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.
Introducing Doric
Our entire cooking and heating world revolves around this - the Doric range cooker, which seems to have been pretty widely used. Trouble is, information on how to best use it is rather thin on the ground - does anyone have any tips?
So many little jobs.
Now that we are more or less done with the really big jobs, the race is on to get all the million and one little things sorted. The little gas bottle woodburner moved home today, and took up its new position in the living room. Thankfully it seems to draw well,...
Spot the difference
Having a look at the original photos this morning, and what a difference 10 weeks makes...
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...