PEP refinement ideas

Hi Mandy, I think you hit on why nobody has chosen the apples from the dry list. You can submit them to the fresh list then do all the different things that apples do.

Foraging
The foraging badge is a bit interesting in that way. I understand why more apples should be picked than berries, as it is a lot less effort to nab them, but there is no route for alternate preservation methods apart from drying. I think this should be considered in the foraging badge at some stage. Other methods of preserving harvested fruit and vegetables include:
 - canning/bottling - apple sauce or apple butter is the most probable destination for such a large quantity of apples
 - root cellaring - another great choice for apples as well as some types of pears, and many root vegetables
 - salt curing - traditionally used for some fruits as well as greens
 - fermenting - wine, beer, sauerkraut, and other fermented food products

There are other methods as well, but the above should cover a reasonable number of cases.

Textiles
"Seed list" - would be good to clarify what this means, as presumably it includes animal fibres. Do you need to plant the seed for the pasture for sheep? Would starting with a shorn, but otherwise unprocessed fleece count? If you're using silk, do you need to start the mulberry trees from seed?
 - I think there's a bit of an issue with the "foundation garments"--the men's and women's sections here seem odd. There is no option for typical 'modern' women's undergarments--that is a bra and panties. A shift or chemise requires a very large quantity of fabric and would not typically be worn as an undergarment by most people today. Perhaps an option for 2x underwear and 2x bras would fit here? Or 3 and 3 if there needs to be a total fabric meterage equivalency to the male garments.

General
Why is everything so big? I have run across this issue across all of PEP -- massive rugs (24 square feet? It would be the devil to move and beat out), tents (a "small tent" is 64 square feet? The tent I use regularly is ~15 square feet and sleeps two alright), large mattresses, big skiddable animal shelters, furniture too big for any space I've lived in (adirondak chairs, 7' long bench, 6' long heavy shelves, 8' tall rolling shelves,  etc), a log trough (30 gallons?), and massive hukelkulture mounds -- maybe Paul just likes things to be made on a grand scale, but a lot of these things are a bit challenging as I run into trouble with my walls, floors and ceilings not being big enough to house these items, and other space-related issues. Houses are much smaller here than in the US (~1,600 sqft v. ~2,300 sqft), though--perhaps that's some of the disconnect? Something to consider when looking at revising the PEP system to be more generally applicable.

In case it is of interest, here are chokepoints I'm encountering completing some sand badges
 - Dimensional Lumber Woodworking
     - install 40 square feet of boards to a structure for siding (inside or out)
 - Food Prep and Preservation
     - Cook grain in a solar oven
     - Cook grain with a rocket stove and haybox cooker
 - Gardening
     - Build a hugelkultur 7 feet tall and 6 feet long
 - Round Wood Woodworking
     -  add one horizontal log to berm/hugelkultur scaffolding
 - Tool Care
     - bicycle maintenance - long time between flats on my current bike & requirement for video makes these BBs a bit challenging at the moment, but not insurmountable

massive rugs (24 square feet? It would be the devil to move and beat out)

We intentionally specified a total square footage instead of a specific size so that people would make a hall runner or whatever size(s) they need. Could be two or three rugs too.

Opalyn Rose wrote:

massive rugs (24 square feet? It would be the devil to move and beat out)

We intentionally specified a total square footage instead of a specific size so that people would make a hall runner or whatever size(s) they need. Could be two or three rugs too.

Thanks, Opalyn! I had missed the bit where it said it could be up to three rugs. I feel a bit better about that, although I would suggest that future PEP installments could consider increasing the total possible number of rugs to 4 as a 3'x4' rug is a pretty reasonable size for most applications.

M Broussard wrote:Foraging
The foraging badge is a bit interesting in that way. I understand why more apples should be picked than berries, as it is a lot less effort to nab them, but there is no route for alternate preservation methods apart from drying. I think this should be considered in the foraging badge at some stage. Other methods of preserving harvested fruit and vegetables include:
 - canning/bottling - apple sauce or apple butter is the most probable destination for such a large quantity of apples
 - root cellaring - another great choice for apples as well as some types of pears, and many root vegetables
 - salt curing - traditionally used for some fruits as well as greens
 - fermenting - wine, beer, sauerkraut, and other fermented food products

There are other methods as well, but the above should cover a reasonable number of cases.

In the Wood and Iron levels of Foraging there's a BB for collecting large numbers of calories and preserving them.  All those methods would fit in that one.  Plus the Food Prep badge has room for most of those activities.

I think we should really consider the wording and requirements for some badges for privacy and security reasons.

I'm a little worried about encouraging people to post detailed photos of the contents of their workshops and all sides of the exterior of their house, which are called for in some of the badges. I understand the point of the badges and I think they are valid, but there is no layer of security for viewing the images on this very public forum.

It may be enough to suggest narrow angle shots for these.

Thoughts?

Hey,

I think it would be cool, to add to the community Badge, Help a mate or anyone!

Sure this probably should be more clearly defined, but I think its a great thing to include.

L. Johnson wrote:I think we should really consider the wording and requirements for some badges for privacy and security reasons.

I'm a little worried about encouraging people to post detailed photos of the contents of their workshops and all sides of the exterior of their house, which are called for in some of the badges. I understand the point of the badges and I think they are valid, but there is no layer of security for viewing the images on this very public forum.

It may be enough to suggest narrow angle shots for these.

Thoughts?

You definitely shouldn't share anything you aren't comfortable sharing online.  At the same time we need to see enough information to make a good assessment of if you actually did the job as required.

Maybe some sort of disclaimer in bold print or something reminding people to be aware of any identifying features of their house when taking the pictures in the applicable BB's?

L. Johnson wrote:I think we should really consider the wording and requirements for some badges for privacy and security reasons.

Thoughts?

Hmmm . . . Well,  I know hardly anything about you except you live in rural Japan but aren’t Japanese. I don’t even know if you’re male or female, so well done on staying ‘hidden’.

I used to use fake names / pseudonyms for all my online profiles but it felt like hiding, so now if I have an option, I use my real name. However, google my name and you’ll never find me.

I’ve posted pictures of myself, my fairly unique bike, the county in the US I live in, shops I visit that you can get to easily on bike, pictures of my house, house number, car, garden, garage/workshop. On the plus side, there are nearly a million other people living in this county and I live in a very generic house and my car is the most bought car in NA. So good luck if you want to track me down and try my apple cobbler.

Next year, I’m moving to a town in NY and I want to be the local distribution point for Azure Standard and my address, phone number and email address will be published online elsewhere. I may have to rethink what images I post. I’m probably too trusting, I still believe the vast majority of people are good people and the most dangerous people are the ones you already know, if you look at crime statistics.

My biggest risk is someone liking my bike and following me home and then coming back and stealing it. I do lock it up in a locked garage, have a dog and security lights. It would be a lot of work for something that’s very distinctive and hard to sell.

Anyhoo . . . There’s my thoughts.

Mike Haasl wrote:You definitely shouldn't share anything you aren't comfortable sharing online.  At the same time we need to see enough information to make a good assessment of if you actually did the job as required.

There are private areas of permies where google can't access. Can google access the PIE forum for example?

If there's someone who needs to keep their own image or location off the web, there may be a way for people to link some of their pictures to a post in their own PIE thread which many of the people who are approving the BB's would be able to access. Although I don't know how to "fuzz out" my face, I know there are people here on permies who would teach me that if there was a picture that required that (modelling a finished sewing project for instance.)

Also, some BBs aren't required for every level, so people can choose BB's where the project is pictured, but less need for the surroundings.

I totally agree that people need to be aware and not feel like they're painting a bull's eye on their forehead! Where you live can be critical - I'm in a pretty low-crime area with a 20 year old vehicle and there are many juicier targets around!

I wanted to follow-up since I brought up the topic.

Here's an idea for refinement of the clean house exterior badge requirement:

Show before, during and after pictures of six distinct areas of the walls, roof, or other surfaces.

You can avoid picturing identifying information like house numbers, wide camera angles, or entrances.


For the clean a workshop badge maybe just add something like:

You can put away your expensive tools before you take the before picture!

Mike Haasl wrote:You definitely shouldn't share anything you aren't comfortable sharing online.  At the same time we need to see enough information to make a good assessment of if you actually did the job as required.

Jay Angler wrote:Although I don't know how to "fuzz out" my face, I know there are people here on permies who would teach me that if there was a picture that required that  

I had to learn how to do just that in order to earn my Community Sand badge.  Here's a "How To" permies post I made teaching others how:

Enhancing privacy - how to blur or pixelate portions of your photos

Going through each badge to see what badge bits it's possible for me to do, and had a few more comments:

Animal care
- Should “Manage breeding and support farm cat resulting in at least six kittens” go into Straw with all the other breeding BBs?
- Perhaps some BBs for breeding insects such as honey bees, soldier fly larvae (for chicken feed), crickets, snails

Foraging
- “Dry list” has conflicting requirements. Main PEP Foraging page says 2 lbs mushrooms, but BB page says 5 lbs.
- It would be good to add other sources of wild nutrition to the list--particularly insects (e.g. crickets/grasshoppers/cicadas/snails), small legal-to-hunt animals other than squirrel/rabbit (possum, raccoon, invasive birds such as starlings, etc). Perhaps a category of "insects/gastropods" and change squirrel/rabbit to "small game"?
- Wood badge 200,000 calorie BB could include methods of preservation other than drying/canning - would be good to allow all the various food preservation methods covered in Food Prep
- Small animal list "fish" perhaps should state that it includes shellfish in the main page as this has been accepted in the BB

It's too bad avocados don't grow in Montana, otherwise I'd already have 10,000 calories of foraged goods (only ~30 avocados to get there!). Same with olives, haha.

Gardening
- Possibility of going down 7 feet rather than up for hugelkulture? I know it was brought up several times in the thread, but perhaps I missed the response.
- Straw badge “Direct seed perennials” - would be good to replace the specific “black locust” with “nitrogen fixer” to keep things open (I really like the generic fruit/nut here—it’s really helpful for folks in different regions/climates). Plenty of nitrogen fixers to choose from, including nice edible things like honey locust, mesquite, etc.
- Wood badge “Direct seed perennials” is suddenly way more prescriptive? Maybe instead say 50 each of X types of fruit, X types of N-fixing tree, X types of nut?

Thanks for finding the mushroom discrepancy, I just fixed it!

I was looking at this BB and had some thoughts.

https://permies.com/wiki/127883/pep-dimensional-woodworking/Cutting-board-BB-PEP-dimensional

I really like how it's designed to use no glue, where a lot of joined cutting boards (especially end-grain) require glue. The making of it would definitely show considerable skill, getting those lines perfect (even with the wedges pushing them together) would be require precision machinery or a lot of checking and measuring.

I do have some concerns though. In my experience any seam, crack, nick, or cranny in a cutting board has collected... things from the things I cut on it. The wedges in this design also seem like they might collect hard to wash grime over time.

I have plans to make a cutting board in the future, but I think the one I would want to make wouldn't have seams, probably just a single board of close-grained hardwood trued to sit flat on a counter with a handle for doubling as a serving tray, and a three squared edges so that it could sit vertically in three other arrangements... maybe something like this?

- from https://www.craftmill.co.uk/plain-wooden-cutting-board-single

Making something like this might more likely be a green wood project rather than dimensional, but it would be my preference for sanitary and practical reasons.

Thoughts?

I agree, I don't particularly like that dovetail design.  I think the force of the cutting board expanding and contracting with changes in humidity will win the battle with the tapered pin.

My personal design would be a series of thick boards (say 2" thick by 5" wide).  Cut lengthwise dovetails on the edges of the boards so each one slides into the next.  Then put a little round wooden pin through each dovetail to lock them in place.

I had similar thoughts when first seeing the cutting board. First, I think it would take a considerable amount of time using so many boards and fitting all those bowties. It seemed a little above wood level to me. I suspect the bowties would want to curl up and come loose after so many wash and dry cycles. It looks like a design meant for glue to me, like some of these $100 cutting boards you see. It does look nice, though. Glue would also prevent stuff from working into the cracks. A solid board would be below wood level to me.

I think a good way to do it would be to tongue and groove the boards together and put two sliding dovetails on top, and two on bottom directly underneath the top ones. Then drill holes at each end of the dovetail strips and drawbore round pegs tightly in place to hold everything under tension. I wonder if beeswax would be good to fill the cracks. It could fill the cracks during assembly and excess would be squeezed out leaving the cracks completely filled.

I don't know many people with area rugs... Why is this a required badge bit? https://permies.com/wiki/111302/pep-bb-nest-sand-rug

Rugs and carpets collect dust. Yuck. Wear socks or slippers inside and you don't need them, even in the winter.

I propose a new badge bit - Replace your rugs and carpet with clever indoor feet warming solutions

Excellent bowsaw frame BB is confused between wood and iron badge. I would fix it if I knew for sure which it's supposed to be.

https://permies.com/wiki/128240/pep-woodworking/PEP-BB-roundwood-iron-excellentbowsaw

L. Johnson wrote:Excellent bowsaw frame BB is confused between wood and iron badge. I would fix it if I knew for sure which it's supposed to be.

https://permies.com/wiki/128240/pep-woodworking/PEP-BB-roundwood-iron-excellentbowsaw

I edited it as it is on the badge page under wood.

Following up on oddball chatter - Maybe we can improve round wood badge something like this:

Build one greenwood work-holding bench such as:
shaving horse
carving bench
spoon mule
or similar apparatus having some basic requirements - legs in a bench, work holding apparatus on bench, ergonomic, effective. Or something like that.

I'd like to see more options on the Quinn and Watson lists of Natural Medicine. Or maybe an oddball/open-ended section, with 1 point for ailments that aren't on the lists. Concussion, eczema, and yeast infection are things I have come across recently, but I don't see where I could use them for PEP.

L. Johnson wrote:I don't know many people with area rugs... Why is this a required badge bit? https://permies.com/wiki/111302/pep-bb-nest-sand-rug

Rugs and carpets collect dust. Yuck. Wear socks or slippers inside and you don't need them, even in the winter.

I propose a new badge bit - Replace your rugs and carpet with clever indoor feet warming solutions

I agree that it should be an option but not a requirement. We didn't have any kind of rugs or carpet for a number of years.
But to address why people even have rugs...we have a couple in my daughter's room. Socks are too slippery as she learns to walk, and the floor gets too cold to sit directly on when we're playing with her. And I have a padded rug in the kitchen for when I'm standing long periods of time. They're all small enough that I can easily clean them. I don't know how I would regularly clean a big area rug.

Found a pile of notes I jotted down while poring over the Metalworking PEP BBs over the holidays. It's a treatise, sorry! I think there are a good number of useful suggestions in there, though!

Metalwork
Some of these (e.g. sand badge) are pretty prescriptive because of the low number of points assigned to each item, meaning one has to make nearly all the items on the list at present—this is exacerbated when you get to higher level badges and they say that you must also complete items from lower level badges. The current focus seems to be making your own blacksmithing tools (and later on, decorative items), and I think it would benefit from some additional easy projects (tons of metalwork to be done on a homestead!) as well as advanced metalworking techniques. Here’s some suggestions:

Sand – missing some of the basic metalworking skills required later in Straw:
 - hooks! These are the quintessential beginning blacksmithing project. You could even specify that they need to be for a particular purpose & for them to be shown performing that purpose (coat hook, tool hook, meat hook, S-hooks for outdoor fire cooking, bicycle hooks—possibilities are endless!)
 - make a nail header and use it to make at least one nail (move nail heading plate from Straw)
 - make your own bolt or threaded rod with a tap and die set. Show it screwing in to the nut/plate/fixture you cut it for (this is a prerequisite for making a C-clamp later—important machining skills include being able to cut your own threads)
 - simple butted chain
 - make a fire striker (the steel part of flint & steel)
 - remove a dent from a bucket, panel, or other piece of sheet metal (or maybe this should be in tool care? Important metalworking skill, though!)
 - copper tags with stamped letters (permanent marking of perennial plant cultivars, or animal name tags); this would essentially be moving “Make, grind, polish and stamp a name tag or key fob” to sand and making it more utilitarian
 - install a metal strap/ring to stop wood from splitting (tool handle, cutting board, stump, etc) ; this is basic sheet metal stuff, and also teaches basic riveting
 - “Marshmallow fork” - this is easier than tongs; perhaps adjust points?
 - “Dress up a mushroomed chisel or splitting wedge” - seems more like a tool care BB

Straw
 Welding (needed some more projects!)
 - bicycle trailer (same points as car trailer if aluminium, because that’s much harder to weld, or less points if steel)
 - bicycle pannier rack
 - bicycle maintenance stand
 - a pair of car ramps
 - Portable rocket stove (split points with Rocket?)
 - Functional arbor
 - strong chain (welded) – Move from wood badge (recommend name change to accommodate forging options below & sand option above)
 - forge firebox
 - Functional gate - 4 points (move from Wood badge, which also contains “pretty gate”)
 - grill
 - weld a handle onto something that needs a handle (drawer, box, rack, heavy equipment)
 - rack for hanging tools or kitchen utensils from the ceiling
 - firewood rack
 - small smoker
 - rain barrel stand
 - frame for heavy-duty table (plenty of uses—butchering, machining, etc)
 - hardy tool (many are welded – have both forge & welding BBs)
 - “Make a gouge for making log bee houses” - shouldn’t this be in forging?

 Forging
 - peen a scythe or sickle blade to make it easier to keep sharp (without removing any metal)
 - dress a pair of tongs (to fit around your metal stock)
 - strong chain (forge welded, riveted, or doubled for strength) – move from wood to here
 - make a crank shaft for a hand-operated tool (e.g. thresher, drum sifter, spinning wheel) and show it working on the assembled tool
 - make X rivets
 - shovel (move wood badge)
 - sickle blade
 - wood chisel with tang
 - small hammer
 - usable sewing needle (this is hard—I’ve tried it!)
 - sewing pins (with heads—heading pins is a bit harder than heading nails!)
 - usable fishing hook
 - hand-forged auger bit
 - 1 set tableware (move from wood badge; also should be worth way less points than axe/froe – drifting a hole through tool steel is very difficult; tableware is beginner stuff)
 - “Decent knife” -- remove railroad spike; these are made from mild steel, and will not make a good knife. Perhaps “reclaimed tool steel” would be a better choice? Plenty of options with files, wrenches, circular saw blades, even ballbearing cases.
 - “Heat treat a homemade knife and prove it” - change title to “temper a homemade sharp-edged tool” as this is also useful for other tools
 - “Branding iron” - possible combo with welding, but maybe fewer points—easier than drawknife, gouge, axe, etc
 - Basic candle sticks – a relatively easy beginner project. First mention of candlesticks should be before iron badge!

 Sheet metal
 - Blades for an old-fashioned windmill
 - Open tool box
 - tool box with drawers

 Shop
 - “Rebar drawer/door handle (flattened ends)” could just be “metal drawer/door handle”. This is doable with folded sheet metal, brass stock, many types of scrap iron. If someone wants to do 3-part welded handles that screw in, I think all the better—this is a “get it done” sort of section and doesn’t need to be prescriptive

 Other
  - Stamp with artistic touchmark to mark metal (move from Wood)
  - “Campfire tripod and hanging grill (buy grill and bulk chain, make/assemble the rest)” Change to variable points? Worth more if you make the grill and chain?
  - Basic foundry capable of melting aluminium (brass/bronze is harder, could be worth more points? Fuel could be propane, charcoal, or wood – leave veggie oil for Wood badge?)

Wood
 Welding
  - Re-face a damaged anvil with a new plate of tool steel
  Sheet metal
  - Make a replacement gear that fits into the old one (or two new ones with matching teeth)
  Forging
  - forge a high-quality sewing needle (this is actually really difficult—don’t discount it because of its size!)
  - 4 matching sets of tableware (harder than making just one—need to be skilled to make stuff the same!)
  - case harden a sharp-edged tool
  - copper hammer (this is hard because drifting a hole through copper bar/rod has a high risk of craking vs. iron. Copper hammers are very useful in metalworking, though)
  - Scythe blade
  - High-grade large tools made from welded tool steel and medium steel (forging points + points in welding – the cutting edge should be tool steel, and the rest medium steel, this ensures a sharp edge and reduces the risk of cracking; hallmark of great tools)
     - hammer (move “Custom hammer" here & rename)
     - axe (rename from “Beautiful axe”)
     - cleaver
     - woodworking chisel (not presently on list)
     - adze
     - froe (possibly use the “high quality” tool BBs here in this list; just clarify that “high quality” isn’t all about looks!)
  - “Nice candelabra / candle sticks” - move from iron
  - Use forge-welding to make damascus steel, then make a beautiful tool out of it

 Other
  - Make a pair of scissors
  - Make a custom saw blade
  - Make a drill press for a hand drill
  - Make a spring-making jig and make spring for clothes pegs (or another utilitarian purpose)
  - X matching drawer handles (again, harder than making just one!)

Iron:
 Sheet metal
 - make a parabolic mirror (this is a difficult task, but think of the solar cooking possibilities!)
 Forging
 - C-clamp – move from Wood. Should be worth as many (or more) points as shovel. Much more involved process as it involves multiple points of drilling, thread cutting, the need for everything to line up just so

 Other
  - Nice anvil (welded tool steel top, horn, etc) – lots of points, perhaps minimum weight req. (>50lbs? >100lbs?)


Points of interest:
Image/media for the “utility grade froe” and “high quality froe” should be switched. The straw level video depicts a higher quality tool than the wood level photo. The same is true for the adze. The broad axes from straw and wood seem to be of similar/identical quality.

“Copper shishi odoshi” - image broken for this BB

Points for hand-forging tools seems a bit out of whack. My partner does forging, and here’s the difficulty rating he’d give to the following tools (which would ideally be reflected in the points):
punch < hook < basic tongs < cutlery (knife) > cutlery (fork) < cutlery (spoon) < trowel < good tongs < soup ladle < shovel < wood chisel < sickle blade < froe < gouge < scythe blade < F-clamp < C-clamp < axe < adze < broad axe < large anvil

The hammer would fall in different spots depending on how large the lump of metal was, and whether it was medium steel, medium steel with tool steel business ends, or solid tool steel. Tool steel is a lot harder to work, and drifting holes for large tool handles takes a lot of time, effort, and in many cases, specialised jigs (or hefty drill presses at slow speed with plenty of lubricant/coolant!!!).

Wow, great list M!  I suspect in the months/years to come we'll have interested groups gather to improve badges they care about.  Like the Textiles people did to generate a really nice textiles badge.  It sounds like you belong on the Metalworking team :)

For the gardening badge, it seems like so much is missing from the sand badge... I just finished a large compost bin but there seems to be no place to submit it in gardening or oddball. This is what I would do:

Observe your land for a few months and record the plants and animals that live there.
Make a sun map of your land.
Identify where water runs and pools on your land.
Map out the permaculture zones for your land.
Do a subset of these (2 or 3?):
* Soil testing
* Build a compost bin
* Build a worm bin
* Trench composting (Ruth Stout style)
* Sheet composting (aka chop and drop)
7x6 feet of one of the following:
* hugelkultur bed(s)
* keyhole bed(s)
* Bed(s) made by sheet mulching
* Raised beds made with natural materials, like an herb spiral
Grow x number of crops from seed to harvest, at least one from each of these categories:
* Cool weather annual crop (like lettuce, carrots, cabbage, etc)
* Warm weather annual crop (like tomatoes, green beans, corn, etc)

C Lundquist wrote:For the gardening badge, it seems like so much is missing from the sand badge... I just finished a large compost bin but there seems to be no place to submit it in gardening or oddball. This is what I would do:

Sounds like you are getting started on PEC ( Permaculture Experiences according to C )

For the sand badge in tool care, as part of the bicycle set, we could add adjusting cones and replacing/regreasing wheel bearings. It’s not hugely complicated but can be quite important, as loose or improperly adjusted cones will render a bike largely inoperable and could cause damage. As I have just discovered the hard way, not even buying a new wheel is safe from this particular pitfall. Could probably be a half-point same as the other items on that list, as while it is more involved than adjusting the brakes, it’s less routine. Both adjusting the cones and the replacing of bearings would be the same item, as while you’re in there fiddling with the cones, you may as well replace the bearings and grease.

As a side note, I’m rather curious why all the bicycle BBs require video whereas most of the BBs I’ve looked at have video as an option.

I'm guessing the reason for the video is because it's hard to tell if you did anything with just photos.  

I think, since there are so many projects that need some form(s) of adhesive, finishes, and sealants to fulfill their purposes, extend their lives & usefulness, and enhance our joy in making and using the final products, we need a badge series on making our own natural adhesives, paints/pigments, dyes, sealants, etc. Surely, there are many ways to do all the above.

I found this, as a tiny starting point: https://www.sewhistorically.com/20-ways-to-make-homemade-natural-glue/

This may not be possible, and may belong on the “tinkering “ forum, but -
As I am trying to go through all the badges, and see what the requirements are for each, the order of the threads is making it time consuming.
In the pep forum, there are a number of non- badge threads mixed in, so that I cannot simply see the list of badges unless I go back to the forums page, and scroll down to the pep link. With that workaround, it isn’t so bad.
The one I haven’t found a workaround for is within the forum for each badge. Because the forum sorts according to date of the last post, the thread that summarizes the requirements is often buried under a stack of individual BB threads.
It might help people navigate more quickly if the “PEP Badge:xxx” thread was locked to the top of that badge’s forum, so that a newbie can see what it is all about.

Lina Joana wrote:.
It might help people navigate more quickly if the “PEP Badge:xxx” thread was locked to the top of that badge’s forum, so that a newbie can see what it is all about.

Nice idea.
People often Start Here and click on the images to take them to the badge page.

I too would love more encouragement towards PEP1 with a BB80 and/or BB100.

Since it's been over a year since the third person lofted this idea, I thought I'd chime in as a fourth voice.

When I started doing BBs, I didn't care about this at all -- I didn't even ask for the first couple BBxx badges, the judges just noticed and gave them to me. But once they started feeling like an accomplishment, I really looked forward to them. And then once they were all used up, I kind of stopped. I have pictures of BBs I've completed, but haven't submitted, because why bother? This sounds ridiculous even to me, but I'm just being honest about my motivations, even if I don't particularly like it.

However, I think sitting at BB60, I'm at the point where every 20 is too much. I'd like a BB100 and a BB200 (or maybe BB160 is better?) to look forward to and keep me idling toward the PEP1 badge.

I too would love more encouragement towards PEP1 with a BB80 and/or BB100.

Christopher Weeks wrote:I think sitting at BB60, I'm at the point where every 20 is too much. I'd like a BB100 and a BB200 (or maybe BB160 is better?) to look forward to and keep me idling toward the PEP1 badge.

While I was still working toward PEP1, I too wanted a BB100 badge.
I know that if you choose the badges with the smallest number of BBs you can earn PEP1 with about 85 BBs completed.  

I earned PEP1 with 145 BBs and had only 10 more BBs to complete the remaining six sand badges.
Also, I had already earned over 74 more BBs that would apply to straw badges.

Lina Joana wrote:
It might help people navigate more quickly if the “PEP Badge:xxx” thread was locked to the top of that badge’s forum, so that a newbie can see what it is all about.

I don't know about mobile view, but in desktop view the thread with the requirements sits above the list of threads. I've circled it in blue.

As I am trying to go through all the badges, and see what the requirements are for each, the order of the threads is making it time consuming...

*Poof!*

Tada!  You can now use the share feature to save this post as a personal bookmark.  It goes straight to the individual PEP Badge wikis.  

Twenty-two Aspects Done Alphabetically
1 Animal care
2 Commerce
3 Community
4 Dimensional lumber woodworking
5 Earthworks
6 Electricity
7 Food prep and preservation
8 Foraging
9 Gardening
10 Greywater and Willow feeders
11 Homesteading
12 Metal working
13 Natural medicine
14 Natural building
15 Nest
16 Oddball
17 Plumbing
18 Rocket
19 Roundwood woodworking
20 Textiles
21 Tool Care
22 Woodland Care

I was looking at the skip camp 2022 day 8, and I was wondering what the thought was behind only covering waterbath canning and brining. When I teach I prefer to take a holistic approach to food preservation. The decision of what type of preservation to use for a food item, is just as important, if not more important than the techniques IMO. I usually start by explaining the many different types of food preservation there is, and why we have to diversified which types food are best preserved in each category. Part of this is talking about safety in food preservation, but it’s also about nutrition. I like brining, but I think fermentation both lacto, yeast, kefir etc. are a more useful stills to have than brining. It’s similar to brining, but the lacto fermentation unlocks more nutrients than brining does, and with a good cold cellar they will last 9 month. Furthermore lacto fermentation rules out botulism, since the botulism bacteria can’t live with the bacterias we use in the fermentation process, Brining has its place, especially with fish and meat,  but it’s use is very limited, and doesn’t give us the advantages the lacto fermentation does.
Anyway next we take herbs. Those are best dried. Fruits and vegetables can be both canned, fermented and dried, but only canned if the acidity is correct. Then we talk about what to do with those that isn’t acidic enough. Do we add acid or do we pressure can instead of dehydrate. With meats, there are even more possibilities including smoking, brining, dehydration and pressure canned.
So, where you start with 2 basic food preservation methods, I start with all of them, and then move on to which method we use for what and why.

The SKIP events are not classes.  They're an opportunity to practice the skills and prove you can do them.  The skills we chose to do at a SKIP event are often focused on things that many people have a hard time doing at home.  Thus the canning and solar dehydrating tasks.  

Mike Haasl wrote:The SKIP events are not classes.  They're an opportunity to practice the skills and prove you can do them.  The skills we chose to do at a SKIP event are often focused on things that many people have a hard time doing at home.  Thus the canning and solar dehydrating tasks.  

I am very glad you introduced them to dehydrating, it’s one of the most useful stills you can have.