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...
Thoughts on heating systems
I get asked about heating a lot. What’s best, the most cost effective, simplest, efficient. All that. So this is a collection of my thoughts based on all the various things we’ve tried (and we’ve tried quite a few). So far we have (or have had)...
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
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...
Making the most of the light
We’re into the part of the year that is hardest for those living off grid, when the days are getting increasingly short, the sun doesn’t appear that often, and when he does, he’s pretty low in the sky. Having been terribly casual about the whole...
Being prepared
The typical image of ‘preppers’ is of heavily armed Americans living in compounds in the mountains, with stockpiles of food and ammunition, or their close relatives the ‘survivalists’ who are kitted out ready to live in shelters in the woods,...
There’s so much to do!
As we approach Samhain – Halloween, and the midpoint of the latest lockdown or ‘extended half term’ as it’s sold to us, we’ve managed to get busy in the garden. Our apple crop this year was woeful, partly due to some odd frosts at bad...
Wind turbine upgrade
Right at the start of the year, Gerry from Kerry was kind enough to give us a working Bornay turbine like the (then broken) one we have, as well as a 15 metre mast to put it on. Our mast is 9 metres which seems pretty tall when you’re near it, but in the world...
Let there be light
For the last eight years we’ve been fervently letting everything grow, more or less unrestricted. So for the first time this summer it became really apparent that it was time to rein things in a bit, as the vegetable garden was becoming darker and darker, and...
Where has the truck gone?
We’ve had lots of emails to ask why the truck isn’t available to stay in at the moment. The simple answer is that during lockdown, we spent a lot of time redecorating and sprucing up Birch Cottage, and then realised that the truck needed even more work...