The GIY (Grow It Yourself) movement has really taken off here in Northern Ireland, and it was great to visit Sally Taylor’s place in Saintfield – the venue for a meeting of the South Down GIY group. Sally has combined a formal garden, retreat, allotments...
Although it has been a quiet week on the blog, here on the farm it’s been all go. Our intrepid WWOOF volunteer Bettina has arrived from Austria, hitch hiking all the way – at one point on a tractor. A terrifyingly long list of things to do exists, and...
One of the principles of permaculture is ‘Obtain a yield’. On seeing the horses the other day, a visitor asked ‘How do you make money from them?’, and seemed surprised when I simply answered ‘We don’t’. It’s an unusual...
One of the problems with buying land that is affordable, is that it is quite likely to be what is known as ‘unimproved’ land, or that it has been improved, but really not a great deal. Most of ours falls into this second category, and so it was with a...
Yesterday I set off to collect our new hens from William over in Cloughey. Daylight reveals that we have 1 Welsummer cockerel, 2 Welsummer hens, 2 Light Sussex, 2 black bantams, 1 goldeny bantamy thing, and a mystery grey hen. They are living in the new polytunnel for...
Midwinter is now only weeks away, and our day is finishing ever earlier. This evening brought us some dramatic skies, and the promise of a nice day tomorrow, perhaps. I am off to collect some more hens, and our first rooster, from the other side of Strangford Lough,...
One of the reasons that many people are put off installing renewable technologies such as solar PV is that in order to generate enough to power a typical house, you need a lot of it, at fairly vast expense. Being simple peasant folk, that’s not an option open...
This weekend has been a busy one indeed. We had our first wwoofers – Andrew McMurray, founder of the Drumlin Wind Cooperative, and Mick McEvoy, Belfast representative for GIY Ireland, both inspirational guys in their own right, who came to help put up our first...
Rima and Tom have been on their travels, storytelling as they go. We thought that the best way to spend this Samhain evening would be sit in front of the fire and listen to the telling of The Bear Child. A fine story it is too and here is a chance to hear it...
We have registered as WWOOF hosts, and now appear on both the Wwoof Ireland and Wwoof UK websites. Already we are busy organising volunteers from all over the world to come and help out here on the farm. Rather fittingly though, our very first WWOOFer is from here in...
Suddenly bus conversions are all the rage, as evidenced by ‘George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces’ on Channel 4. A lovely bus gets converted, if you can take all the C4 jeopardy, and there’s another good old Lambourn horsebox that is being let too....
Autumn is well and truly here at Lackan Cottage Farm, and the colours are amazing. This is the time of year for fixing fences, getting the place sorted for winter, and as the land is so wet, cracking on with all the many projects that need attention. First up was to...
