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. Â This winter has been an especially difficult one for anyone with livestock, and we...
Help to save a beautiful home
This beautiful home is, according to Pembrokeshire Council Planners “harmful to the rural character of the locality”, and must be demolished. This despite the fact that it is situated in a private spot, not overlooked, and built from natural materials. The...
Spring – not quite what we were expecting
This is our pond. Rather unexpectedly as it happens – we didn’t line it or fill it, the volume of rain and snow over the past 24 hours has simply been so huge that it has filled itself. Quite handy really as we can see how the levels will work out,...
Six months old!
Well, Lyra is six months old today, and here she is with her first wooden spoon, which she seems to think is extremely tasty. She’s thriving in our ‘new’ home, which is of course six months old too – nothing like a deadline to get the work...
From the Mourning of the World – The Dark Mountain Project
We love Rima’s work – there’s quite lot of it hanging on the walls here, so this new project is very exciting. The Dark Mountain Project is putting together an album of various artists that are synpathetic to their cause, and it is to be released...
STOP PRESS – Change of date for One Million Trees in One Day
We got the following email from the One Million Trees in One Day people this morning, announcing a last minute change to the planting date, which will now be SATURDAY 27TH APRIL. Apologies to anyone who was planning to come along – we hope you can make it on the...
Mad March
March feels like a sprint to the finish in our woodland, which despite this latest brief cold snap is starting to come to life. Everywhere you look, green shoots are appearing, and some of the trees have tiny buds coming out. The challenge for us is to finish...
The end of winter (almost)
Well, for a while there we thought that spring had sprung, and so it would seem did the snowdrops. After what seemed like a long winter, suddenly there is a dash to get all the jobs done before spring arrives properly (whatever happened to hibernation?). For...
Low Impact Development – in Northern Ireland?
In theory, low impact building is something that you hope people would welcome: low cost shelter that uses minimal resources, that people can put together themselves, and which doesn’t stand out like a sore thumb in the landscape. It could be cheap to heat, to...