The first step of the B2M process is gasification‒the conversion of wood chips to gas. The B2M village will make the technology easily maintainable with parts that can purchased at a typical hardware store and structure the community to capture the massive sensible heat that would be lost into the air.

The second step is to compress the gas. An important part of making this process work on the village scale is to leave the monitoring to computer-managed programs – freeing up the community's time to work on other things.

The last step of the process is to condense the fuel. This chemical process puts off a great deal of heat, which can be captured to heat essential buildings and provide steam to power electricity generators.

By arranging energy-intensive buildings around the B2M equipment, we are able to scavenge the heat incredible heat that is put off by the process and put it to use. Laundry, bathing, baking, and greenhouses are close by to capitalize on the energy. Next, houses are heated by piping hot water through the floor. The last stop is as tepid water to irrigate ground crops.

A big part of the stewardship of marginal land is to respect nature's intention for it. An oak tree drops thousands of acorns in its attempt to seed a new tree and only a fraction will happen to land where an adult oak would thrive. By transplanting a sprout to an ideal location, we've fulfilled nature's needs and we can responsibly feed the rest to the pigs, which converts the land's resources into food for the two-leggers.

The B2M village is designed to work on marginal lands (since that is all that may be available to many communities). Our flagship village, Windward, rests in the mountains of Washington at 1,000 ft elevation, so the soil gets cold. Terraces help expose the soil to the sun and keep roots warm.

An incredibly important part of the B2M village system is culture. We have a tried and tested system of by-laws to help guide the decision-making and conflict-resolution portions of community interaction. We foster a culture of mutual support, including a gift economy that runs on labor and goods exchange.

A space-efficient farming technique for raising fish and veggies in tandem. The fishes' waste becomes the plants' fertilizer as water is cycled through. Talapia, our fish of choice due to it's ability to convert feed nearly pound-for-pound to meat, require relatively warm water so the system's placement next to the B2M equipment is a great way to capture and use stray heat from the B2M process.

Electricity for homes and other necessary functions can be provided with steam engines. In addition to burning fuel, we can capture the energy from the exhaust of our internal combustion engines – after all, two thirds of the energy from a car's fuel goes right out the tail pipe! - and we can use the heat from the chemical reactions in the B2M condenser. The bearings lades of the turbine can be made with oak and lubricated with tallow from our sheep

Equally important is the Negawatt – a unit of energy that measures energy we never had to use. By using gravity, warm clothing, and well-designed buildings, we can reduce our energy needs to consume only what we produce.

Routine plant maintenance produces pounds and pounds of weeds which are happily fed to the animals. Making a living on marginal land means using all of its resources and finding a multi-use place for everything it offers.