Who turned the sun off?

Who turned the sun off?

Weeks like the one we’ve just had are an off-gridder’s nightmare. After some lovely cold autumnal days, it is now seven days since we saw anything approaching sunshine, and output from our solar PV is negligible, to put it kindly. It is weather like this...
Hedge time

Hedge time

Something we learned the hard way is that it’s great to let some things grow wild, but that others really do need managing. In particular, hedges. Our early years here were marked by a pretty militant approach to minimal intervention, which firstly went down...
Round(ish) house project update

Round(ish) house project update

After two years I’ve finally succumbed to covid, so am waiting out my quarantine by updating some of the information on the website. First up is the roundhouse – a project that at one point I thought would never end. After a quick start, the thought of...
Celebrating our tenth year with new courses

Celebrating our tenth year with new courses

2022 marks our tenth year here at Lackan Cottage Farm, and a lot has changed, both here at the farm and in the wider world. Much of what we’ve done here seems very relevant in 2022, and many things that were relatively ‘fringe’ back in 2012 are...
Tour and talk at Lackan – 28th May

Tour and talk at Lackan – 28th May

This is our tenth year here at Lackan. After two years when we’ve basically been closed down, and the world has changed in many ways it is time to open up again. We’ve had lots of requests from people to come and look around and ask questions, and this is...
Tour and talk at Lackan – 28th May

Tour and talk at Lackan -24th April 2022

This is our tenth year here at Lackan. After two years when we’ve basically been closed down, and the world has changed in many ways it is time to open up again. We’ve had lots of requests from people to come and look around and ask questions, and this is...
Finishing the roundhouse

Finishing the roundhouse

Five years ago now we started building the strawbale roundhouse, which has been a slow affair, mainly due to not having any good clay with which to make earth plaster.  The roundhouse has sat there full of junk – a wasted opportunity that has nagged at me each...
Celebrating our tenth year with new courses

Guided tour of Lackan Cottage Farm

***Sorry we have sold out of tickets for this one. We will run another so click here to leave your contact details and we’ll let you know when the next date is **** We’re offering a guided tour of Lackan on Sunday 26th September, where we will be looking...
The same but different

The same but different

It’s nearly ten years now since we landed here at Lackan and in some ways the world has changed very little, and in others we live in an utterly different universe to the one we inhabited back then. Ten years ago we were holed up in our truck in Bangor, building...
Celebrating our tenth year with new courses

Summer updates from Lackan

July already, how did that happen.Needless to say we’ve done a fair bit since my last post back in December, so I’m not even going to try and cover it all, as its mostly in a recent video where I did a quick walk round. As you can see, we’ve made...
Bornay wind turbine upgrade

Bornay wind turbine upgrade

So after years of gradually building up our renewable system, we’ve definitely got to the point where its perfectly capable of supplying us with enough power, but the thing about building a system as you go along is that its a learning process, and sometimes you...