This last Sunday was the third anniversary of the launching of the Low Technology Institute website and blog. It has been another busy year. We’ve added the first phase of a solar hot water system to our 1850s home in Cooksville, Wisconsin, a historic village 25 min south of Madison. We continued work on the walipini greenhouse and have been working on our hour-a-day garden project. We also hosted our first Sustainability Skill Share.
In this year, we developed our fourth major research project, Three Sisters Polycrop Testing, but didn’t get funding. We’re in the process of expanding our third research project, Breeding Mite-Tolerant Bees. This year, we’ve published 109 blog posts (595 since 2016), 4 new podcast episodes (39 since 2016), 3 new videos. In the last year, 23,337 people visited the site, for a total of 52,070 people from 162 countries have visited the website. Our most popular posts were Beehives Three Ways: Long Lanstroth, Layens, and Trågkupa (for sale, too!), Leopold Bench or Chair Plans, and Potatoes Five Ways: A Trial Looking at Different Potato-Growing Methods. This tells me that contributor posts are the most popular so please do consider sending something in for us to publish.
We hope to see continued expansion in the coming year. We are focusing on growing our research portfolio this year. We will have at least two more research projects to announce soon and are working hard to secure funding to support them.
In all honesty, our production of blog posts, podcasts, and videos was not as high as I would like it to be. We’ll be soliciting funds to underwrite our multimedia productions. Also, with the winter coming, we’ll have more time inside to work on these things.
If you want a look back at the first blog posts, follow any of the links below.
Sep. 15 — New Book — Why Did Ancient Civilizations Fail?
Sep. 16 — Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5 — Summary
Sep. 20 — In Defense of Luddites
Sep. 21 — Introducing the Bee Report — Fall 2016
Sep. 22 — What is Low Tech?