Plant the Village
  • The Essay
  • The On-Ramp
The Onramp
The Onramp
Foundational Skills
Phase 1: Foundation
  • Food
  • Water
  • Energy
  • Waste
  • Construction
Phase 2: Intermediate
  • Food
  • Water
  • Energy
  • Construction
Phase 3: Advanced
  • Food
  • Water
  • Energy
  • Construction
  • Governance
Community
Formation track
  • Finding your people
  • Building trust
  • Alignment conversations
  • The forming group
  • Governance models
  • Health and care
Soft skills
Interpersonal tools
  • Nonviolent communication
  • Consensus facilitation
  • Conflict resolution
  • Meeting management
  • Emotional intelligence
Cottage economy
Phase 1: Individual income
  • Validating what you make
  • Pricing for sustainability
  • Legal basics
  • Sales channels
  • Reinvesting in your craft
Phase 2: Group income
  • Collective production
  • Cooperative structures
  • Shared brand
  • CSA and subscriptions
Phase 3: Community identity
  • Signature product or craft
  • Community brand
  • Apprenticeship as product
  • Specialize vs. diversify
  • Reinvestment at community scale
Health
Phase 1: Household preparedness
  • First aid and CPR
  • Home herb garden
  • Nutrition and food as medicine
  • Mental health first aid
  • Home pharmacy
  • Knowing when to refer out
Phase 2: Deeper preparation
  • Wilderness medicine
  • Expanded herbalism
  • Preventive health systems
  • Health record-keeping
Resources
  • Books
  • Videos
  • Workshops
  • Communities to visit
The Onramp›Soft skills

Soft skills

The interpersonal tools that decide whether a group stays together. No phases here either, these five run in parallel and you'll use all of them for the rest of your life. They're all learnable, and all chronically underinvested in by people who would rather talk about water systems. I'm one of those people, which is exactly why this track exists.

Nonviolent communication

Marshall Rosenberg's framework teaches a specific pattern of speaking and listening: observe without judging, name the f…

Consensus facilitation

A good facilitator does four things: gets every voice heard, keeps discussion on the actual question, names emerging agr…

Conflict resolution

Unresolved conflict is the leading cause of death for intentional communities. The goal here isn't eliminating disagreem…

Meeting management

Bad meetings are expensive. They burn time and energy, and worse, they corrode trust when the same topic comes back mont…

Emotional intelligence

Community life puts people in close quarters under real stress, which means the emotional skills that matter aren't exot…