PEA: The Core Philosophy and Badges

Hi. I didn't know the development of PEA was already at this point! I think PEA is a better fit for me than PEP. So in the future I will do the PEA BBs. But the first Badge I will get (soon-ish) will be Textiles. That is the same for PEP and PEA.

Important Note: The PEA program is about to get some revamps and upgrades. If anyone is currently working on a badge in the program, please let me know. Hopefully this won't be an inconvenience to anyone, but the current iteration was left in a half-finished state that doesn't hold true to Paul's vision of where PEA should go. Many of the changes are likely to be minor things adapting it to be more of a closed system not requiring one to visit any property aside from the interior of one's dwelling.

While finishing the Textiles Badge I started doing the Nest BBs too. Because here it said for PEA Nest is the same as in PEP.
But I found out not all BBs in Nest are possible if you live in an apartment with central heating ...
I am lucky to live in a ground-floor apartment, with front and back yard. But in an apartment without garden it will be difficult to water the plants with water from the shower (but you can still use the water to flush the toilet).

Hi D.Logan I am signed up for PTJ and SKIP next summer but thought it might be fun to get the family excited with some PEA projects. I noticed the note about a revamp to this and was wondering if there's an update before I jump in?

D. Logan wrote:Important Note: The PEA program is about to get some revamps and upgrades. If anyone is currently working on a badge in the program, please let me know. Hopefully this won't be an inconvenience to anyone, but the current iteration was left in a half-finished state that doesn't hold true to Paul's vision of where PEA should go. Many of the changes are likely to be minor things adapting it to be more of a closed system not requiring one to visit any property aside from the interior of one's dwelling.

Interesting.. so the PEA program won't require access to property? I'm kinda curious about a middle ground program - somewhere in along the lines of "skill to permaculture your suburban lot / garden space". For example, smallish hugulkultur might be viable in some cases or a management of a few fruit trees..

daniel thomas allen wrote:Hi D.Logan I am signed up for PTJ and SKIP next summer but thought it might be fun to get the family excited with some PEA projects. I noticed the note about a revamp to this and was wondering if there's an update before I jump in?

Based on the ongoing discussions, I believe that the final updates should be in place by the end of 2020. I will be doing some things this week and moving forward to finalize the badge bits on all of the badges within PEA. When everything is in place and we start work on creating the pages for individual badge bits, I will comment here to make sure everyone following the conversation is made aware of it.

Ivar Vasara wrote:Interesting.. so the PEA program won't require access to property? I'm kinda curious about a middle ground program - somewhere in along the lines of "skill to permaculture your suburban lot / garden space". For example, smallish hugulkultur might be viable in some cases or a management of a few fruit trees..

PEA will not require access to any physical land. The concept is that everything can be done without leaving your apartment if need be. That said, we have been adjusting the wordings to allow those who wish to complete the badges with aspects outside of the apartment if they wish. A good example of this is the Forage badge concept, where it allows for both harvesting on your own as well as seeking to obtain things through sites like Amazon. While that may sound a bit strange, the idea of the PEA badge version is to become familiar with the materials and prove that you can make use of them even if you aren't yet able to obtain them directly from your environment. As to a middle ground, I am not currently aware of a PEX that bridges the gap between the two, but the basic idea of PEA is to serve as a stepping stool that allows you to begin proving out your permaculture knowledge and skills even before your present environment would make it possible. Many badge bits for PEA will cross over with those found in PEP, allowing for a person to get PEA, then obtain PEP badges very quickly once they have the access or by picking up a PEP event.

So what does "Tentatively Available Badges" mean?  I'm living in an RV currently, traveling across the western US, so I think this would be the best option for me out of the SKIP/PEP stuff for now.  
I had an idea for natural building -- one activity could be doing a soil shake test.  This would only require going someplace that you can dig up some dirt do the test and put it back if need be.  Most apartment dwellers and RV'ers could do this.  

John Valdes wrote:So what does "Tentatively Available Badges" mean?  I'm living in an RV currently, traveling across the western US, so I think this would be the best option for me out of the SKIP/PEP stuff for now.  
I had an idea for natural building -- one activity could be doing a soil shake test.  This would only require going someplace that you can dig up some dirt do the test and put it back if need be.  Most apartment dwellers and RV'ers could do this.  

I'll be doing an update at the end of this weekend, so hopefully you'll be seeing actual badge bits appearing under the fully finished badges very soon. The long and short is that all of the tentatively available badges are done, but in the soft sense. They're each undergoing a final pass to solidify them into their final form. So far, 4 badges are in the fully available stage and are having badge bits worked on. These are Roundwood, Garden, Animal Care, and Community. I'll go ahead right now and update that on the opening of this post as well.

I think the top post could be edited to say which ones are now published.

Just discovered these and they're much more within my scope at the moment as I live in a rented suburban house with a small yard. I'm cracking on with PEP's but I'll only be able to get a handful of sand badges.

1) Can I start doing them and posting?
2) Do you want me to test any or help?

Great work!

Yes, all the badges in the Fully Available and Tentatively Available sections are actually fully available.  But...  we don't have the BB threads created for many of them.  If someone wanted to create the BB pages for them, that would be extremely helpful.  I can walk someone through it and double check them once they're created.

Here's a tutorial on making PEP BBs, I think the PEA BBs would be quite similar: How to create a BB thread

Instead of doing it in this thread, discussing and reviewing new BBs can be carried on over here: PEPPERS in action

I've finished a couple of PEA Sand badges. I can't see them on my merit badge profile page or the badge bits. Is that page just for PEP? Is there anywhere I can see what I've done? Sorry if I've asked this before, I know I was thinking about it but couldn't find a previous post.

Unfortunately the PEA side of permies isn't as developed as the PEP side.  So programming requests are in the queue but haven't been started yet.

Mike Haasl wrote:Unfortunately the PEA side of permies isn't as developed as the PEP side.  So programming requests are in the queue but haven't been started yet.

Ah, no worries. I'll try and drum up some more PEA people and get some exposure. I think for a lot of people like me who are only dreaming of a homestead, they hold a lot of value on their own.

I'm assuming that if there's not a pick # or get # points you have to do everything on the list to get the badge. But it sometimes looks like that part of the list is a pick #. Is there a way to make it more obvious what is a do everything or pick from amongst lists.

Aurora House wrote:I'm assuming that if there's not a pick # or get # points you have to do everything on the list to get the badge. But it sometimes looks like that part of the list is a pick #. Is there a way to make it more obvious what is a do everything or pick from amongst lists.

Hi, Aurora

I am not sure I understand your question.

I found some fun threads that you might enjoy that talk about PEP.  PEP is Permaculture experience According to Paul. PEA is Permaculture experience for Apartment dwellers:

https://permies.com/wiki/skip-pep-bb

https://permies.com/wiki/pep-badge-oddball

https://permies.com/t/172320/SKIP-PEP-PEA

https://permies.com/t/172553/skills-inherit-property/SKIP-Club-BB-Week

https://permies.com/t/172587/permaculture-home-care-cleaning/purity/Ohsoji-Big-Year-Cleaning-Time

https://permies.com/wiki/143116/skills-inherit-property/PEP-SKIP-BB

https://permies.com/t/170739/skills-inherit-property/Badge-Bits-commenting-liking-growing

https://permies.com/t/171697/PEP-Holidays

This is a large list though I am sure they will be of interest to you and maybe other members.  If you do not find the answer to what you are looking for, please ask for more information.

Yes, if it doesn't say "Get X points" or "Do X of the following" it means "Do all of this stuff".  Which badge(s) are you seeing the problem in?

Mike Haasl wrote:Yes, if it doesn't say "Get X points" or "Do X of the following" it means "Do all of this stuff".  Which badge(s) are you seeing the problem in?

So the garden badge has a list where I think you're supposed to do all of make poly culture through pot 2 indoor plants and keep them alive then has a second list of pick 5 from seed saving through yet another houseplant.
Food prep has cook grain 4 different ways off this list then a list of the pep versions of tasks.
Animal care starts off with get 7 points any pep bb count as 1 pt and then here are some pea modifications and their pt values.
Foraging says make 6 cups of tea/dishes make each a sperate species then has a species list. I think this means make 1c tea/dish of x make another 1c of y + 4 more times. Not make 6c ginger tea 6c dandelion salad.
Medicine wants you to make 6 preparations but the links are for plants not the preparation so if you have no idea the difference between tea, infusion, tinture, deccotion, ECT you can't look at other people's work to find out if you have a new one or just a repeat of what you've already done.
The mish-mash of formats makes it hard to follow what is and isn't required. Also in attempting to post to bb threads some dump you into the pep bb and some don't appear to be accepting bb submissions to the pea bb.

Ok, looking at them now....  Yes, the format varies but that's because each badge had different parentage (PEP system) and depending on how much stuff there was it sometimes made sense to group them.

Lots of BBs are shared with PEP so when a link takes you to the PEP BB, just submit over there and you're all set for PEP and PEA.  The PEA software hasn't been upgraded to be like PEP yet so when doing a PEA BB just hit "submit" and we'll approve them with staff notes (like we were doing for PEP 18 months ago).  Sorry, the PEA stuff is newer and still has a few bumps.

Gardening - yes, do the whole top section and then pick five from below.
Food prep - yes, cook it four of the possible 5 ways and then do the rest.
Animal care - it's a "point system" badge so get 7 points, up to 5 can come from PEP as it states
Foraging - It does say that each of the cups of tea or salads have to be a different species
Nat Medicine - Each link goes to an individual BB for that preparation and herb.  So the Elderberry Vinegar Infusion BB takes you to a page that lists what you have to submit to get that BB.  It says that it's a vinegar infusion in the requirements so I think it's clear.  No one's done many of them so there's no prior work to view.  You can always go over to the PEP Natural Medicine badge where most/all of these have corresponding BBs that you can peruse to see how people did it.

Mike Haasl wrote:Ok, looking at them now....  Yes, the format varies but that's because each badge had different parentage (PEP system) and depending on how much stuff there was it sometimes made sense to group them.

Lots of BBs are shared with PEP so when a link takes you to the PEP BB, just submit over there and you're all set for PEP and PEA.  The PEA software hasn't been upgraded to be like PEP yet so when doing a PEA BB just hit "submit" and we'll approve them with staff notes (like we were doing for PEP 18 months ago).  Sorry, the PEA stuff is newer and still has a few bumps.

Gardening - yes, do the whole top section and then pick five from below.
Food prep - yes, cook it four of the possible 5 ways and then do the rest.
Animal care - it's a "point system" badge so get 7 points, up to 5 can come from PEP as it states
Foraging - It does say that each of the cups of tea or salads have to be a different species
Nat Medicine - Each link goes to an individual BB for that preparation and herb.  So the Elderberry Vinegar Infusion BB takes you to a page that lists what you have to submit to get that BB.  It says that it's a vinegar infusion in the requirements so I think it's clear.  No one's done many of them so there's no prior work to view.  You can always go over to the PEP Natural Medicine badge where most/all of these have corresponding BBs that you can peruse to see how people did it.

Thank you for clarifying and All the effort this takes.

I didn't realize what PEA was and am glad to have stumbled on it. It fits my situation, in some aspects, better than PEP due to my small property size. I'll be looking more into it and hopefully participating in gaining BBs here.

Hindsight, the PEM program was the best fit so far. It really matches better to my locale than the PEP program. In any case, I still am dabbling in these PEA badges. They helped me expand my skills as well as build skills to use in other BBs. I appreciate the effort put into this!