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.
Roundhouse progress..day 3
Day three on our roundhouse build, and we have made excellent progress. Today we prepared the supporting posts by charring the ends of them in a fire, before dropping them into the post holes dug on Monday. Clinton, Chris and I backfilled the holes with slate,...
Cloughjordan – its not just me
After my last post on Cloughjordan - the eco-village that isn't, I couldn't help wondering that surely I couldn't be alone in thinking that it was a soulless place that really had missed the point. Turns out I was right. There is even a website devoted to it -...
A missed opportunity
When we began the process of looking at how and where we'd like to live, we started as close to home as we could, and that turned out to be 'The Village' at Cloughjordan. Hooray, we thought, a cutting edge eco-village at least if not exactly on our doorstep, on the...
Building in the woods
After the success of our recent treebog building weekend, we're moving on to slightly more ambitious things, and the construction of a little post and beam timber framed building, which will have a reciprocal frame roof.Today we began by marking out and digging the...
Who’d have thought
It is funny how chance encounters can take you down unusual routes in life. Seemingly unimportant events divert you along paths you didn't even know existed. I can't remember the first time I saw Simon Dale's 'hobbit house' on the net, but I know that it confirmed in...
A shiny new treebog is born
Well, after two days frenzied activity, here is the new treebog. Thanks to all who helped bring it about - it is truly a thing of beauty, and should settle nicely into its woodland setting. We used sawmill skins almost exclusively to build it, and its the first of the...