A proposed working example of community self-sufficiency, and a blueprint any community can use.
Elderwood is a proposed village in the Southern Appalachian mountains, designed to show how people can feed, house, teach, care for, power, maintain and govern themselves through cooperation, and to share how, so any community can build those abilities where it is.
Nothing is built yet. It's being designed in the open, and you're invited.
Before there is a village, there is a forest.
How the parts hold each other up
Growers raise food for the lodge's daily meals, the shops build and fix their tools, and the homes keep them close to the land.
Its recovery sets how much gets built, and restoring it creates skilled work and research.
Elders are paid to teach what they know, and apprentices carry it forward.
Baths, classes and retreats bring neighbors in and help pay the village's way.
Belonging never depends on attending gatherings, sharing beliefs or agreeing with a leader, and losing a job shouldn’t mean losing a home. How those protections hold is still being designed.
The system map
What each part needs, what it gives, and what it depends on. Connections are proposals, not things that already run.
Every part is also a pattern a neighborhood, town or farm can start where it is. Take a pattern home, or develop an idea with us.
The village / Food & Land
Food & Land
A working landscape meant to build the village's ability to feed itself, care for soil and water, multiply plants, train growers and support livelihoods. It's designed in layers that come into bearing at different speeds, so early harvests can come in while longer-lived plantings mature.
Layers that give at different speeds
Faster layers can carry the slower ones while they mature.
What food depends on
A food system is only as strong as what holds it up. Choose any system around the circle to see how food depends on it.
Each connection explains itself here.
Take-home pattern · open the full pattern
Plant once, feed generations, and give the cuttings away.
The Community Food Forest & Nursery. Start with annual beds that can give harvests early, plant perennial layers that come into bearing over the years, and where it's possible, start propagating early so every success can multiply.
Work out locally: climate and hardiness, native species, water, who holds the land, and who keeps it up for decades.
| Where | A way to start |
|---|---|
| A yard or a block | Shared fruit trees and guilds across neighboring yards, with one propagation bed |
| A vacant lot or church grounds | A community food forest with annual beds at its edge and a seasonal plant swap |
| A school or town park | A teaching orchard, with classes as part of its upkeep |
| A farm | Food forest alleys, growing structures and a nursery selling regionally |
The village / Forest & Restoration
Forest & Restoration
Most of the land is forest, reported to be damaged by past logging and storms. The intention is to bring it back toward biodiversity, resilience and healthy relationships among its many layers of life, and to make that work a livelihood, a school and a research site whose methods other communities can use.
Take-home pattern · open the full pattern
Heal one patch of ground well, measure it honestly, and share what you learn.
The Restoration Commons. Start with a baseline, choose a few approaches, monitor them over years, involve neighbors as community scientists, and publish results, failures included.
Work out locally: native species, who holds the land, permits, and who keeps measuring for years.
| Where | A way to start |
|---|---|
| A yard | Replace lawn and invasives with native plants, and keep a yearly record of what returns |
| A neighborhood park or creek | A volunteer restoration crew with fixed photo points and a simple annual report |
| A town watershed | Restoration plots with a university partner and published monitoring |
The village / Homes & Care
Homes & Care
Elders, families, caregivers and other workers living as neighbors, in private homes, with shared life by choice. Intergenerational living is the intention. A home is never tied to a job, and care through licensed partners is intended to adapt as people need different kinds of support.
Take-home pattern · open the full pattern
You can lose your job without losing your home.
Home Never Tied to the Job. Keep housing and employment in separate hands. If housing is offered to workers, a separate body holds it on ordinary tenancy terms, so losing or leaving a job doesn't end the tenancy.
Work out locally: tenancy and employment law, and how the housing is funded.
| Where | A way to start |
|---|---|
| A farm, camp or care home that houses staff | Hand the housing to a separate land trust or cooperative, on ordinary tenancy terms |
| A town | A community land trust for essential workers |
The village / Making & Repair
Making & Repair
How Elderwood would build its ability to make, maintain and fix what it relies on: the tools and frames of the food system, the doors and cabinets of its homes, the pumps and panels of its power and water, the cups on the café table. A community that can repair its own things depends less on distant suppliers, throws less away, and turns skill into livelihoods.
Take-home pattern · open the full pattern
Fix it, make it, teach it, and pay the people who know how.
The Repair & Apprentice Shop. A shared shop with skilled hands on site, apprentices paid to learn on real work, and a steady stream of things to make or fix, from the community itself and from paying customers.
Work out locally: insurance and liability, trades licensing, which skills are scarce nearby, space and noise, and where materials come from.
| Where | A way to start |
|---|---|
| A church hall or library | A monthly repair café with volunteer fixers and a tool table |
| A neighborhood | A tool library and a shared bench in a garage or storefront |
| A small town | A makerspace with paid instructors, apprenticeships and a market stall |
| A farm | A farm shop that maintains equipment, trains an apprentice and fabricates for neighbors |
The village / Learning
Learning
How Elderwood would keep its abilities alive across generations and send them out into the world. Growing food, making and repairing, caring for people, tending the forest and running the village's power and water are all skills. Each would be taught where the work happens, by the people who know it, and carried home by learners to their own communities.
Take-home pattern · open the full pattern
An elder's knowledge is work, and it's paid like work.
Paid Elder Faculty. Skills and memory disappear when elders do, and elders are too often treated as a care load instead of a source of knowledge. Pay elders to teach what they know, record it with their consent, and connect them with apprentices and children who want to learn.
Work out locally: the funding source, insurance, and safeguarding rules.
| Where | A way to start |
|---|---|
| A library or senior center | Paid elder-led classes, a few each season |
| A school | Elders teaching a craft or story each week |
| A town | A skills and oral-history archive, built one recorded class at a time |
| A whole village | The Elderwood Elder Faculty |
The village / The Lodge
The Lodge
The lodge is where the village's cooperation becomes something you can count on: a meal every day for anyone who wants one, cooked in a kitchen designed to run on dependable staffing rather than goodwill alone. It's also a place to gather that never requires anyone to.
Take-home pattern · open the full pattern
A meal every day, and a kitchen that can feed the valley when the power goes out.
The Resilience Lodge. One shared kitchen that serves ordinary days and hard ones: daily meals that don't depend on volunteers showing up, and a place that could keep cooking and sheltering neighbors through storms and outages.
Work out locally: food-safety and kitchen permits, a dependable way to fund the cook, backup power and water, and coordination with local emergency services.
| Where | A way to start |
|---|---|
| A church hall or community center | A weekly pay-what-you-can meal, where people can give money, an hour of help or produce, and nobody is turned away |
| A neighborhood | A shared kitchen with a backup power source, ready to cook for neighbors through an outage |
| A small town | A pay-what-you-can café with a paid cook, set up to serve as an emergency kitchen and warming or cooling center |
| A whole village | The Elderwood lodge |
The village / Energy, Water & Waste
Energy, Water & Waste
This is the system that keeps every other one running. For power, the direction is diverse, redundant renewables, with an aspiration to give surplus back to the grid; the specific mix is open to exploration. For wastewater, living wetlands are the approach the project most wants to explore, examined alongside composting toilets, biogas and conventional options.
Take-home pattern · open the full pattern
Let a marsh clean the water, and keep the birds.
The Living Wetland. Planted wetland cells, after the right treatment steps, can clean wastewater and become habitat. Arcata, California does it for 16,000 people, pairing conventional treatment with treatment marshes that became a wildlife sanctuary.
Work out locally: the treatment before the wetland, flat ground, climate, soils, who maintains it, and the approvals at each scale.
| Where | A way to start |
|---|---|
| One household | A reed bed for greywater |
| A cluster of homes | A shared wetland |
| A town | A system like Arcata's |
Where the wider valley could come into village life. It would offer affordable bathing, a café, a pool and a dance floor open to the public, with quieter places for treatment, solitude and making art. People could come for a soak or a coffee, become regulars, and find their way into the rest of the village. The idea began with Café Mokka in Arcata, California: a café with private hot tubs and saunas that people can afford.
Take-home pattern · open the full pattern
A cheap soak and a good café can be the start of a community.
The Public Bathhouse & Café. Many places have nowhere warm, affordable and unhurried where people of every age can be together without spending much. Make bathing affordable, and let a café make it social. Keep a lively public centre, with quieter spaces down their own paths.
Work out locally: codes for public bathing, water and wastewater; heat and water sources; bathing culture; accessibility on wet floors; and insurance.
| Where | A way to start |
|---|---|
| A neighborhood | A shared wood-fired sauna and a coffee counter, run as a membership or cooperative |
| A small-town main street | A shop-front with a few private tubs and saunas and a café |
| A farm or retreat land | Tubs, a sauna and a farm café using what the land grows |
| A whole village | Elderwood Baths & Commons |
The village / Guest Stays
Guest Stays
How people who don't live at Elderwood could spend real time there: to learn a trade, take a course, make art in solitude, rest, or experience alternative building firsthand. The design keeps two questions apart that are usually tied together: why someone comes, and where they sleep. A stay should be good for the guest and for the village. Some people come to learn and carry skills home; some simply come to rest.
Why people come
- Stewardship: learning a trade or practical skill on real work
- Learning: permaculture courses and workshops
- Creative work and solitude: artist retreats and hermitages
- Rest and retreat: Baths & Commons, quiet woods
- Ecotourism: living for a while in an alternative building
Where they could stay
- Bunkhouses or hostel-style lodging
- Primitive campsites (a possibility)
- Artist retreats and hermitages
- Ecotourism stays in intelligently chosen alternative buildings, booked much like an Airbnb
Any purpose, any suitable bed: a workshop participant can choose whichever fits them, subject to availability and to places held for a dedicated use. Lodging isn't a rank.
Take-home pattern · open the full pattern
Come to help, leave knowing how.
The Stewardship Stay. Pair a place to stay with real teaching: a skilled person responsible for each learner, real work that grows in responsibility, a way to show what was learned, and lodging chosen separately from the reason for coming. Work that teaches, never a substitute for a paid job.
Work out locally: arrangements designed within each place’s rules for work, volunteering, lodging and camping; insurance; and what counts as a fair exchange.
| Where | A way to start |
|---|---|
| A farm or homestead | A bunk room or a few campsites, and one learner at a time working alongside the farmer |
| A community garden or makerspace | A structured learning role with a named teacher, instead of open-ended volunteering |
| A town | A hostel or host homes partnering with trades programs and local makers |
| A whole village | Elderwood Guest Stays |
The village / How it holds together
Choosing what fits the place
Every structure starts with what it lets people do: a growing space through the cold months means fresh greens in February; a home means someone can grow old where they are; a workshop means a broken pump gets fixed this week. Only then comes the question of how to build it. Competing designs are compared openly on four questions, and other communities can reuse the method even where their answers come out different.
- What is it meant to accomplish?
- What conditions does it need?
- What does it take to build and keep up?
- What evidence would help choose?
A growing space for the cold months
One candidate the project especially wants to understand is the walipini, a pit greenhouse dug into the earth with a glazed roof angled to the winter sun. Its best-known manual was written for the high, cold, sunny plateau around La Paz, Bolivia, and asks for a floor well above the water table and stable soil. These mountains are far wetter and cloudier, and hillsides bring groundwater, so whether it would work here is a genuine open question.
| Option | What it’s meant to do | What it needs | What to weigh |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walipini | Year-round growing using the earth’s stable temperature | A deep water table, stable soil, winter sun, good drainage | Excavation, drainage, flood risk, venting |
| Hoop house | Season extension above ground | Open sun; anchoring against wind and snow | Quicker and lower cost, but stores less heat overnight |
| Attached sunspace | Growing space that also warms a home or the lodge | A south wall with winter sun | Shares heat and humidity with the building |
| Cold frames | Greens and seedlings through the shoulder seasons | A sunny bed | Small and cheap; needs daily opening and closing |
| Heated conventional greenhouse | Reliable winter production | Power or fuel | Steady results, ongoing energy cost |
Evidence that would help: groundwater depth at candidate spots through a wet season, soil drainage and stability, and winter sun hours at the exact spot. A small walipini and a hoop house side by side could answer one specific question: how warm and productive each stays through a winter here.
Homes and buildings
What buildings should make possible: warm, dry, healthy rooms; step-free homes elders can stay in; low running costs; repairs local hands can make; and places people find beautiful. None of these methods is chosen.
| Approach | What it’s meant to do | What it needs to work | What to weigh |
|---|---|---|---|
| Timber framing | A durable structure from large timbers, joined by a teachable craft | Suitable timber, skilled framers | Sourcing; it usually pairs with another wall system |
| Straw bale | Thick, highly insulating walls from a farm byproduct | Dry bales, deep roof overhangs, raised foundations | Moisture in a rainy climate; local straw supply |
| Cordwood | Walls of short, seasoned log ends set in mortar | Well-dried wood, possibly from restoration thinning | Shrinkage gaps, insulation between the logs |
| Earthship | Passive-solar homes with earth-packed tire walls, developed in the New Mexico high desert | Strong sun and the dry climate it was designed for | How its mass and humidity behave in a wet, cloudy climate; tires; permitting |
| Aircrete | Lightweight foamed-cement walls and domes | Cement supply, careful sealing | Cement’s carbon footprint; moisture |
| High-performance conventional framing | Well-insulated, airtight standard construction | Standard trades | A baseline that makes the others’ trade-offs visible |
Evidence that would help: local rain, humidity and sun data; the permitting path for each method; materials within reach; and the full cost over decades, maintenance included. Whatever the method, every building needs accessibility, upkeep the village can manage, permits, insurance and fire safety.
The village / How the village runs
Cooperation without a loyalty test
Daily meals, growing, maintenance and care need dependable coordination. Belonging must not depend on attending gatherings, sharing beliefs, or agreeing with a leader.
Elderwood’s intentions are clear: responsibilities should be explicit and limited, essential work should be dependable, and losing a job should not automatically mean losing a home. How decisions are made, and how these protections hold under pressure, is work to develop with future residents, workers and people who understand cooperative communities.
The intentions
- A kitchen shift is just a kitchen shift, never a test of commitment or character.
- Any shared obligations are explicit, limited, fair, and known before anyone moves in.
- Short meetings where useful, and other ways to take part.
- Ceremony and spiritual practice are always optional; people hold their own beliefs or none.
- Disagreeing with a leader is ordinary.
- Housing, care and work never depend on conformity or personal loyalty.
- Standards are about conduct, not belief, and apply to everyone equally.
Proposals to explore
- Paid staff for essential services: the kitchen, maintenance, core growing.
- Stewards with bounded roles, terms and backups, who can step down without explaining.
- Any resident obligations written into the housing agreement, capped, with real alternatives.
- One schedule everyone can see.
- Meetings with a published agenda, an end time and written notes.
- Home, work and care held by separate bodies.
- An independent advocate, and power that rotates.
Why it’s designed this way
No rulebook makes a culture free. What design can do is make pressure harder to apply, easier to name, and possible to undo, and make protections that don’t depend on any one person, founders included, staying good.
Questions to work through
Who can make an ordinary operational decision, like changing the dinner schedule?
What the proposal suggests so far
Stewards with bounded roles, such as a kitchen or garden steward, each with a written scope, set hours, a term and a backup. Paid staff run essential services. Bigger decisions don’t require being in the room: people can respond in writing, by phone, through a delegate or during a set comment period.
Still open
Where the line between ordinary and bigger decisions sits, and who draws it.
How does someone challenge a decision they think is wrong?
What the proposal suggests so far
Work meetings keep written notes of what was decided and why, and decision records keep the minority view. An independent advocate and plain-language directions to outside authorities are available at any time. How the village is governed gets an outside review.
Still open
Who reviews a challenge, how quickly, and with what power to change the outcome.
What happens when someone declines a request, disagrees with a leader or reports a problem?
What the proposal suggests so far
A protected period: any change to that person’s housing, work or care needs independent review first. Only written obligations count, and no agreement mentions attitude, attendance or belief. Housing, work and care sit with separate bodies, so the person you refuse is not also your landlord, your boss and your care provider.
Still open
Who the independent reviewers are, and how they stay independent.
What stops one social circle from running everything?
What the proposal suggests so far
Term limits, outside-appointed seats, and a register of close relationships among leaders, with recusal. Separate bodies for land, housing, care and the Model, each formed only when it has something real to hold. An anonymous yearly question, “Do you feel free to say no here?”, published in aggregate.
Still open
How to keep separate bodies from being run by the same friends.
Who decides now, and who decides later?
What the proposal suggests so far
No legal body exists yet. Today, design direction is advisory, gathered through open review. The proposal is a published, dated trigger for when interim authority passes to a council.
Still open
Almost everything about that council: its form, how members are chosen, and what it can never vote away.
Know how cooperatives, land trusts or intentional communities kept participation genuinely voluntary, or how they failed? Help develop it. Take-home pattern: Shared Work, Free People.
The village / How it pays its way
How the whole village pays its way
Self-sufficiency is partly an economic question. A community that grows food, repairs its own things, makes some of its own power and teaches its own skills buys less from outside and keeps more value at home. Elderwood still has real costs, and no estimates exist yet. Professional, site-based estimates come first, so this shows the relationships, not invented numbers.
Coming in
Has to cover, year after year
Without
relying on any one donor
growing past what the forest can carry
cutting essentials when money is tight
Building it
- whatever land arrangement becomes possible
- site work: access roads, water, power and wastewater
- homes, the lodge, the shops, Baths & Commons, spaces for the school and institute
- growing structures, and the first years of restoration
Running it, every year
- paid work across every system
- food and materials bought from outside
- insurance, utilities and system upkeep
- licensed services, legal and audits
- independent oversight and the advocate
- ecological monitoring and the annual forest report
Setting money aside
- an operating reserve for bad years
- a replacement fund for roofs, systems and equipment
- an emergency fund for storms and outages
- a relocation fund for people who leave
Paid work
| System | Paid roles that might exist |
|---|---|
| Food & Land | Growers, a nursery lead, animal care |
| Forest & Restoration | Restoration crew, monitoring technicians |
| The Lodge | A kitchen lead and cooks |
| Making & Repair | A maintenance crew, shop instructors |
| Homes & Care | Care staff, employed by licensed partners |
| Learning | Teachers, paid elder teachers, paid apprentices |
| Baths & Commons | Café and bath staff, practitioners |
| Energy, Water & Waste | System operators; licensed trades under contract |
| Coordination | A coordinator, the independent advocate, outside reviewers |
Where income could come from
| Source | What it could help cover | What to weigh |
|---|---|---|
| Resident housing payments: rent, co-op charges or buy-ins | Housing and its upkeep | Affordability across generations |
| Meal payments, model undecided | The lodge kitchen | Daily meals for everyone stays the intention |
| Baths & Commons | Its own costs, possibly more | Demand, staffing, building cost |
| Guest lodging, retreats and events | Lodging, plus a share of common costs | Visitor limits set by the forest; residents’ privacy |
| Courses, trainings and design courses | Teaching | Scholarships, recognition |
| Nursery plants, produce, eggs, honey, crafts and commissions | Growers’ and makers’ pay | Sales aren’t profit until costs are paid |
| Support for communities adapting the model | Keeping the blueprint open and maintained | The model itself stays free |
| Surplus power to the grid (an aspiration) | A small offset | The energy mix and utility rules |
| Grants and philanthropy | Restoration, research, education, the resilience hub, independent oversight | Published gift rules; no gift buys control |
| Purpose-matched funding programs | The system each one fits | Eligibility to be researched; nothing assumed |
Cross-subsidies, kept visible
Some parts may earn more than they cost; others never will. Private bookings could help keep public bathing affordable; guest and course income could support daily meals or elder teaching; philanthropy could carry restoration and oversight. Every cross-subsidy would be written down and published.
What still gets bought from outside
Food the land doesn’t grow, building materials, fuel and backup energy, parts, professional services and insurance. Self-sufficiency means shrinking that list where it makes sense, not pretending it’s empty.
Principles
Essentials come first in a downturn. If the numbers only work with more visitors than the forest can carry, the plan changes. No donor large enough to steer. Capital, operating and reserves kept apart, with a stated point to pause.
Take a pattern home
Start where you live
Elderwood is one proposed working example. Every district also carries a pattern that a neighborhood, a church, a library, a town or a farm can start with what it already has. None of them needs a village; each can begin small, prove itself, and grow. Communities adapt the functions to their own climate, resources, customs and institutions; nobody is expected to copy this village’s buildings or social arrangements.
The pattern library
Eleven patterns, each a way to build one ability where you live. Open one to see its ingredients, ways to begin, and what changes with local conditions.
The Community Food Forest & NurseryPlant once, feed generations, and give the cuttings away.
Builds the ability
Feeding people, and multiplying what grows well
The problem it answers
Many communities depend heavily on food shipped in from far away, while the land around them grows lawn.
The pattern
Start with annual beds that can give harvests early. Plant perennial layers that come into bearing over the years. Where it’s possible, start propagating early, so every success can multiply.
Suggested ingredients
Adapt or replace these; they aren’t a required recipe.
- early harvests while the perennials mature
- paid, continuous stewardship
- a way to propagate what succeeds
- teaching built in
- a clear plan for where the food goes
- tools, water and repair close at hand
Ways to begin
| Where | A way to begin |
|---|---|
| A yard or a block | Shared fruit trees and guilds across neighboring yards, with one propagation bed |
| A vacant lot or church grounds | A community food forest with annual beds at its edge and a seasonal plant swap |
| A school or town park | A teaching orchard, with classes as part of its upkeep |
| A farm | Food forest alleys, growing structures and a nursery selling regionally |
Changes with local conditions
Climate and hardiness, native species, water, who holds the land, and who keeps it up for decades.
Where it stands
Proposed in the Elderwood design and untested there. Adapt the function, not the look: climate, resources, customs and institutions differ.
See it at Elderwood: Food & Land Share an adaptation or correction
The Restoration CommonsHeal one patch of ground well, measure it honestly, and share what you learn.
Builds the ability
Restoring damaged land, and knowing what worked
The problem it answers
Damaged land is common, and much restoration goes unrecorded, so others can’t learn from it.
The pattern
Start with a baseline, choose a few approaches, monitor them over years, involve neighbors as community scientists, and publish results, failures included.
Suggested ingredients
Adapt or replace these; they aren’t a required recipe.
- a baseline before acting
- a few approaches, not every idea at once
- monitoring kept up for years
- neighbors as community scientists
- results published, failures included
Ways to begin
| Where | A way to begin |
|---|---|
| A yard | Replace lawn and invasives with native plants, and keep a yearly record of what returns |
| A neighborhood park or creek | A volunteer restoration crew with fixed photo points and a simple annual report |
| A town watershed | Restoration plots with a university partner and published monitoring |
Changes with local conditions
Native species, who holds the land, permits, and who keeps measuring for years.
Where it stands
Proposed in the Elderwood design and untested there. Adapt the function, not the look: climate, resources, customs and institutions differ.
See it at Elderwood: Forest & Restoration Share an adaptation or correction
Restoration Before ResidenceThe land’s health decides how much gets built.
Builds the ability
Growing within what the land can carry
The problem it answers
When building comes first, the land’s health tends to be measured afterward, if at all.
The pattern
Each phase of building waits on restoration milestones set after a baseline. Homes, visitors and buildings are capped by what the land can carry, and if the finances only work at a size the land can’t hold, the finances change.
Suggested ingredients
Adapt or replace these; they aren’t a required recipe.
- an honest baseline
- milestones set before building, not after
- an outside guardian with power to defend the land
- an independent ecologist who can pause decisions
- a public report every year, bad news included
Ways to begin
Adapting this at smaller scales means understanding the land before expanding its use, setting ecological limits, and deciding who can enforce them. That’s proposed wording, not an established method. Share an example from your community.
Changes with local conditions
Who can act as an outside guardian, what the baseline measures, and which milestones fit the land.
Where it stands
Proposed in the Elderwood design and untested there. Adapt the function, not the look: climate, resources, customs and institutions differ.
See it at Elderwood: Forest & Restoration Share an adaptation or correction
Home Never Tied to the JobYou can lose your job without losing your home.
Builds the ability
Housing people securely, and the freedom to speak up
The problem it answers
When an employer controls someone’s housing, speaking up about unsafe work can cost them their home. Caregivers, farmworkers and live-in staff know this well.
The pattern
Keep housing and employment in separate hands. If housing is offered to workers, a separate body holds it on ordinary tenancy terms, so losing or leaving a job doesn’t end the tenancy.
Suggested ingredients
Adapt or replace these; they aren’t a required recipe.
- separate organizations for housing and work
- tenancy terms that never mention employment
- independent review of any move
- rents workers can actually afford
Ways to begin
| Where | A way to begin |
|---|---|
| A farm, camp or care home that houses staff | Hand the housing to a separate land trust or cooperative, on ordinary tenancy terms |
| A town | A community land trust for essential workers |
Changes with local conditions
Tenancy and employment law, and how the housing is funded.
Where it stands
Proposed in the Elderwood design and untested there. Adapt the function, not the look: climate, resources, customs and institutions differ.
See it at Elderwood: Homes & Care Share an adaptation or correction
The Repair & Apprentice ShopFix it, make it, teach it, and pay the people who know how.
Builds the ability
Maintaining what a community relies on, and passing on trades
The problem it answers
Things get thrown away for want of a repair. Trades knowledge retires without successors. Young people and career-changers have few paid ways in.
The pattern
A shared shop with skilled hands on site, apprentices paid to learn on real work, and a steady stream of things to make or fix, from the community itself and from paying customers.
Suggested ingredients
Adapt or replace these; they aren’t a required recipe.
- real work, not just classes
- skilled people paid to teach
- maintained, safe, shared tools
- a way in for everyone: repair days, a tool library, intro sessions
- income that covers upkeep
Ways to begin
| Where | A way to begin |
|---|---|
| A church hall or library | A monthly repair café with volunteer fixers and a tool table |
| A neighborhood | A tool library and a shared bench in a garage or storefront |
| A small town | A makerspace with paid instructors, apprenticeships and a market stall |
| A farm | A farm shop that maintains equipment, trains an apprentice and fabricates for neighbors |
Changes with local conditions
Insurance and liability, trades licensing, which skills are scarce nearby, space and noise, and where materials come from.
Where it stands
Proposed in the Elderwood design and untested there. Adapt the function, not the look: climate, resources, customs and institutions differ.
See it at Elderwood: Making & Repair Share an adaptation or correction
Paid Elder FacultyAn elder’s knowledge is work, and it’s paid like work.
Builds the ability
Teaching, and keeping skills and memory alive
The problem it answers
Skills and memory disappear when elders do, and elders are too often treated as a care load instead of a source of knowledge.
The pattern
Pay elders to teach what they know, record it with their consent, and connect them with apprentices and children who want to learn.
Suggested ingredients
Adapt or replace these; they aren’t a required recipe.
- fair pay
- accessible places to teach
- safeguarding wherever children are present
- consented recordings
- learners who actually want the skill
Ways to begin
| Where | A way to begin |
|---|---|
| A library or senior center | Paid elder-led classes, a few each season |
| A school | Elders teaching a craft or story each week |
| A town | A skills and oral-history archive, built one recorded class at a time |
Changes with local conditions
The funding source, insurance, and safeguarding rules.
Where it stands
Proposed in the Elderwood design and untested there. Adapt the function, not the look: climate, resources, customs and institutions differ.
See it at Elderwood: Learning Share an adaptation or correction
The Resilience LodgeA meal every day, and a kitchen that can feed the valley when the power goes out.
Builds the ability
Feeding people every day, and caring for neighbors in emergencies
The problem it answers
Many communities have no place where anyone can count on a meal, and no kitchen ready to keep cooking when storms knock out power.
The pattern
One shared kitchen that serves ordinary days and hard ones: dependable meals available to everyone, paid for in a way designed locally (pay-what-you-can is one option), and backup power and water so it can keep cooking and sheltering neighbors in an emergency.
Suggested ingredients
Adapt or replace these; they aren’t a required recipe.
- a paid cook, so meals don’t depend on volunteers showing up
- meals available to everyone, however the community decides to fund them
- backup power and water
- coordination with local emergency services
Ways to begin
| Where | A way to begin |
|---|---|
| A church hall or community center | A weekly pay-what-you-can meal, where people can give money, an hour of help or produce, and nobody is turned away |
| A neighborhood | A shared kitchen with a backup power source, ready to cook for neighbors through an outage |
| A small town | A pay-what-you-can café with a paid cook, set up to serve as an emergency kitchen and warming or cooling center |
Changes with local conditions
Food-safety and kitchen permits, a dependable way to fund the cook, backup power and water, and how an emergency kitchen is coordinated with local emergency services.
Where it stands
Proposed in the Elderwood design and untested there. SAME Café in Denver works on a related idea: guests can volunteer time, donate money or give produce in exchange for a meal. Adapt the function, not the look: climate, resources, customs and institutions differ.
See it at Elderwood: The Lodge Share an adaptation or correction
The Living WetlandLet a marsh clean the water, and keep the birds.
Builds the ability
Cleaning water with living systems
The pattern
Planted wetland cells, after the right treatment steps, clean wastewater and become habitat.
Suggested ingredients
Adapt or replace these; they aren’t a required recipe.
- the right treatment before the wetland
- enough flat ground
- someone responsible for maintaining it
- approval at the right scale
Ways to begin
| Where | A way to begin |
|---|---|
| One household | A reed bed for greywater |
| A cluster of homes | A shared wetland |
| A town | A system like Arcata’s |
Changes with local conditions
The treatment before the wetland, flat ground, climate, soils, who maintains it, and the approvals at each scale.
Where it stands
Proposed in the Elderwood design and untested there. Arcata, California cleans the wastewater of 16,000 people by pairing conventional treatment with planted treatment marshes that became a wildlife sanctuary. Adapt the function, not the look: climate, resources, customs and institutions differ.
See it at Elderwood: Energy, Water & Waste Share an adaptation or correction
The Public Bathhouse & CaféA cheap soak and a good café can be the start of a community.
Builds the ability
Caring for people’s wellbeing, and bringing neighbors together
The problem it answers
Many places have nowhere warm, affordable and unhurried where people of every age can be together without spending much.
The pattern
Make bathing affordable, and let a café make it social. Keep a lively public centre, with quieter spaces down their own paths.
Suggested ingredients
Adapt or replace these; they aren’t a required recipe.
- an everyday price for neighbors, not tourists
- food to linger over
- separate routes for social and quiet spaces
- movement for elders
- local growers, makers, practitioners and artists involved
- a stake for neighbors, through membership, a cooperative or a community board
Ways to begin
| Where | A way to begin |
|---|---|
| A neighborhood | A shared wood-fired sauna and a coffee counter, run as a membership or cooperative |
| A small-town main street | A shop-front with a few private tubs and saunas and a café |
| A farm or retreat land | Tubs, a sauna and a farm café using what the land grows |
Changes with local conditions
Codes for public bathing, water and wastewater; heat and water sources; bathing culture; accessibility on wet floors; and insurance.
Where it stands
Proposed in the Elderwood design and untested there. Adapt the function, not the look: climate, resources, customs and institutions differ.
See it at Elderwood: Baths & Commons Share an adaptation or correction
The Stewardship StayCome to help, leave knowing how.
Builds the ability
Teaching practical skills that people carry home
The problem it answers
Places that host volunteers often get labor and give little back, and volunteers leave with a few memories and no new skill. Lodging is often tied to role, so whoever works the most sleeps the worst.
The pattern
Pair a place to stay with real teaching: a skilled person responsible for each learner, real work that grows in responsibility, a way to show what was learned, and lodging chosen separately from the reason for coming.
Suggested ingredients
Adapt or replace these; they aren’t a required recipe.
- a teacher, not just a supervisor
- work that teaches, never a substitute for a paid job
- written scope and a fair exchange
- lodging with dignity, whatever the role
- a record of skills the learner takes home
Ways to begin
| Where | A way to begin |
|---|---|
| A farm or homestead | A bunk room or a few campsites, and one learner at a time working alongside the farmer |
| A community garden or makerspace | A structured learning role with a named teacher, instead of open-ended volunteering |
| A town | A hostel or host homes partnering with trades programs and local makers |
Changes with local conditions
Arrangements designed within each place’s rules for work, volunteering, lodging and camping; insurance; and what counts as a fair exchange.
Where it stands
Proposed in the Elderwood design and untested there. Adapt the function, not the look: climate, resources, customs and institutions differ.
See it at Elderwood: Guest Stays Share an adaptation or correction
Help develop it
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About Elderwood
Elderwood is a proposed village in the Southern Appalachian mountains and an open blueprint for community self-sufficiency, published under Permaculture for All: open designs for meeting human needs together, within what the land can give.
Where it stands. Nothing is built. No land is secured and no funding, partners or legal body exist yet. The location stays private while the project is early; the illustrations show invented terrain.
How to read it. The site separates three things: the project’s guiding intentions; design possibilities, which are open; and suggestions, which are offered for discussion. Options are described openly; estimates and final designs will develop through research and review.
Get in touch. hello@permacultureforall.com