Meet Rain!
This is Rain. He’s a two year old cob, who came to live with us this weekend, having been a resident at Holly’s Horse Haven, a horse rehabilitation and rescue centre in County Louth. He seems to have been more neglected than mistreated, and so apart...
One year on…..
For a while there we thought it might never be sunny again, but once again we are enjoying the warmth, and the knowledge that the sun is providing our electricity and an increasing amount of our hot water. All around us the place is bursting into life, and the brown...
One million trees, one polytunnel, many volunteers
In what was an exceedingly hectic but productive end to the week, we welcomed a host of volunteers to the farm to help us plant our contribution to One Million Trees in One Day, which in the end turned out to be about 160, in a variety of places all over the farm....
Finally some sun, and a new polytunnel
Rather surprisingly the sun came out today so we dashed out and got to work. Claire and Lyra were on weeding duty in the small polytunnel, and I managed to put up the frame of the new big polytunnel, although some interesting acrobatics were needed as I was on...
Composting loo – a toilet reborn
Something that we’ve desperately needed since arriving is a decent outside composting loo, if only to save muddy hordes coming in and out of the house in the depths of winter. We inherited an old tin hut of an outside loo, that had the particularly...
Off grid
It isn’t a huge amount of solar, but it’s enough to allow us to manage almost entirely without the mains grid. (The washing machine is too much for this system). We have, in theory, enough power to keep us going for 5 days in the event of it being...
Pruck around the clock
‘Pruck’, as Dougie assures me, is the local word for things that have been scrounged, recovered, recycled or blagged, and a marvellous word it is too. This week has seen what I can only describe as a pruckathon, and we have many people to thank for...The vampire horse
Horses are the most benign, friendly non agressive creatures, right? Well – never annoy one, or you might just end up like Mel. He must have upset Sherafey yesterday, because he came in from the field with a huge hole in his neck. She must have been very...
The need for resilience
A fundamental part of our thinking here at Lackan Cottage is resilience – being able to cope with whatever life happens to be throwing our way at the time. For us, this means doing more ourselves and being less reliant on outside sources. The mainstay of this is...
Our animal friends in their wintry wonderland
At last the rain and snow have stopped, and there is a hint of blue sky above us now. The wind is still bitterly cold though, and the snow shows no sign of leaving us any time soon. This winter has been an especially difficult one for anyone with livestock, and we...