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.
Our dream hovel
We are in the throes of designing our dream hovel, to be created somewhere in deepest Wales, from timber and strawbale. It's really hard when faced with a blank canvas and a tiny budget, but here is our creation, which will be a timber framed affair with strawbale...
The Dark Mountain
Detail from Dark Mountain by Rima Staines I first came across the Dark Mountain project through Rima Staines' excellent blog as she was responsible for the cover design of their latest book.The text on the back cover struck a chord with me, and reads -"Welcome to the...
Our hens have arrived
Finally they have arrived - our four hens have taken up residence. We have an Ancona (pictured above left); a Lavender Araucana (above right); a Black Araucana (below) and last but not least, a rather marvellous Welsummer. They have had a fairly eventful 24 hours,...
New hen house
Here is my best attempt at a hen house yet. This version has front and rear windows, side door, 3 nesting boxes, and a pull out floor. As with all my constructions it won't blow away. The frame was made from reclaimed 3x2 timber, and we went mad and bought the...
Testing testing…..
The ever helpful Philip from Leisure Batteries Ireland has kindly lent us a Victron 750W Inverter, so that we can get a comparison with his new budget range of inverters that are coming soon.Our cheap and cheerful modified square wave 500W inverter works pretty well,...
Hens!
Claire has been studying chicken books all week, and we went to the Rare Breeds thing at the Folk and Transport Museum at the weekend, coming away convinced that the mighty Arucana hen is the one for us. Specifically the lavender Arucana, which lays fantastic...