I used to ask my students, “how would your life change if fossil fuels or even just oil ran out?” Most answers involve transportation, which makes sense because the only time many of us think about oil is when we fill up our cars. In fact, the biggest immediate disruptions would be to our clean … More Grow Your Own — Part II: When Fossil Fuels Fail
What if fossil fuels disappeared? That is the premise of the Low Technology Institute and the question is not rhetorical. Fossil fuels will stop being used, whether it is tomorrow or in a few decades. At some point we will no longer be using coal, natural gas, or petroleum for our main energy sources. Perhaps … More Grow Your Own — Part I: What if Fossil Fuels Disappeared?
We’re excited to be part of the Community Engagement Open House on Wednesday, November 6, from 4:00–7:00 p.m. in UW–Madison’s H.F. DeLuca Forum Discovery Building (330 N. Orchard St.). The purpose of the event is to link up organizations with members of the community and help share ways to green our homes, engage in environmental … More Join us at the Community Engagement Open House at UW–Madision on Wednesday
I was recently in our perennial fruit plot spreading straw over the strawberry beds. I was thinking of the word strawberry as I worked. In German, it is Erdbeere, which means “earth berry.” In Spanish, fresa, which comes from the Latin Fragum and can be compared to French fraise and Italian fragola. Most food words in … More Putting Strawberries to Bed for the Winter. Wait “straw”berries?
Avid readers will notice that we haven’t been posting much over the last month. That’s because every free moment has been given over to installing our solar panels (see the earlier posts here). Here I’ll recap the physical installation of the panels and other components. In the next post, we’ll go through how we ended … More The Institute is Getting Solar Panels — Part IV: Installation
Just down the road from the institute is the Danky-Schelshorn Prairie. Until 2003, this land was under agricultural cultivation, but Jim and Christine decided to turn it back into a prairie habitat. The Danky-Schelshorn Prairie was established when Christine took a workshop at the UW Arboretum. Through their friendship with Steve Glass, they accelerated the … More Upcoming Workshop — Gathering Prairie Seeds, Oct. 19, 1–4 p.m., Free (Space is Limited)
We’ve been chronicling our addition of solar panels (see them all here). Today we’re going to go through the layout and electrical diagrams of the system. The Layout The panels will be mounted on the back of our garage. This is for a few reasons. First, our house’s roof slopes west–east while the garage is … More The Institute is Getting Solar Panels — Part III: System Layout
We are installing solar panels on the institute and we’re doing it ourselves (see our blog posts on this topic here). If you’ve considered doing it yourself but want to get a little hands-on experience and an idea of the scope of the job before going forward, this workshop is for you. The federal tax … More Upcoming Workshop — Installing Solar Panels, Oct. 5, 1–3 p.m., Free (Space is Limited)
We are expanding our work to develop mite-tolerant bees and strategies for other beekeepers to follow suit, and you can be part of it! We’ll be creating a bee yard with 60 hives, and each one costs about $150 to build. We’re looking for businesses, organizations, and individuals or groups who are interested in adopting … More Adopt A Hive! — Partner with Us to Help Bee Research
It is inspiring to hear people across the world talk about their worries and hopes for the future. The movement should not be discounted because it is spearheaded by people often too young to vote. Indeed they have the most to lose, as those of us making decisions today will have passed away when the … More Strike! Today is the Global Climate Strike
