PEP Badge: Oddball

Jay Angler wrote:Personally, I would have thought you'd have something like this in "Tool Care", as the reason I had to make it was that Hubby kept loosing part of the set! So the goal was to make a pocketed, roll-up, wrench holder.

I have a hunch that this sort of project will appear at the Straw level in Textiles

Mike Haasl wrote:I'd say it's up to you Beau.  I'd say either here in the Oddball badge is fine, or in the Homesteading Oddball thread.  

Oddball is scored for the time it would take a pro to do it with a bit of luck.

Homesteading Oddball is scored for the time it would take a talented newbie to do it.  IE more points

But, Homesteading Oddball only counts towards Straw/Wood level Homesteading.  So if you want to work ahead for that badge, I'd put it in there.  If you want to get Oddball Sand first, I'd keep it here.  It's up to you.  If you want to move it, just reply here and I'll cut/paste your thread over into the other thread.

I’m ambivalent as I’ll got for both eventually. I guess I’ll just leave it here. Thanks Mike!

Time was probably 2.5 to 3 8-hour days (plus 6 hours with a 5-person group) including demo, cleanup, sorting, felling and limbing standing dead trees, designing, arguing, changing plans, building. Probably could have been done in less than two now that I know a bit better what I’m doing with roundwood.

Mike Haasl wrote:

Jay Angler wrote:Personally, I would have thought you'd have something like this in "Tool Care", as the reason I had to make it was that Hubby kept loosing part of the set! So the goal was to make a pocketed, roll-up, wrench holder.

I have a hunch that this sort of project will appear at the Straw level in Textiles

I think that would be good! Having efficient ways to store and carry multi-part equipment is a way of using one skill-set (sewing) to support a second skill-set (you can't use a tool if you can't find it!) I've often seen commercial versions of what I made, but I've usually been disappointed when "one-size-fits-all" actually fits nothing! Hubby was *very* pleased with the new holder.

I had fun with the driveway this summer.  It was time to seal it to preserve its life.  While I didn't install the blacktop/asphalt driveway, I feel I need to maintain it or the fossil fuels that went into making it will just go to waste.

So I had to edge back the turf, pressure wash the driveway, let that dry, sweep it clean, seal the cracks (twice), sweep it again, seal it, sweep it again and seal it a second time.  Each of these was a different day since they all need 24+ hours to dry.  And it has to be over 60F for the low temp with no rain in the 24 hour forecast.  In my area that's a hard combination to achieve.  So it took careful weather watching for 3 weeks to get 4 days that would work.  

I didn't get pictures of the crack sealing in process but you can see the new black lines on the first photo where the cracks are now sealed.

Last photo is of footprints on the new sealer where people walked between the buckets instead of around the fresh sealer to get to our farm stand.  Some people just don't have any sense!  It was dry enough for foot traffic at that point but it's still silly...

The driveway is quite long.  Two cars wide at the garage, narrowing down to one for the turnaround spot.  Then 1 car wide for 100 yards out to the road.

Pictures got out of order, last two happened first...

Approximately how many hours did it require for removing sod from the edges, sweeping, sealing, & recoating?

Sod and all the rounds of surface prep took about 7 hours, crack sealing took about 6 hours, two sealing layers took about 5 hours.  So overall about 18 hours.  

Stacking functions when processing fruit.

I’m a big believer in spending a little more prep time to get multiple products out of the harvest. We’ve recently been processing lots of apples from local trees, and we now have (or will have soon)

Apple juice, frozen
Apple juice, canned
Fruit leather (apple mixed with raspberry, strawberry or cherry from prev frozen harvests)
Apple scrap vinegar
Apple peelings, frozen, for future vinegar batches
Dried apple rings
Apple pulp, frozen, for future fruit leather
Apple cores to a local farm for their chickens
Compost ingredients

Process:
Peel and core and slice apples using a hand wound peeler. Peels go in one bucket,  cores (plus any messy bits) go in another, slices go either into acid water (if they will be juiced) or straight onto a dehydrator tray and into the dryer.

Peels get sugar water added, and placed in a cloth-covered bucket in the kitchen to ferment. There are usually too many to do this with all of them rightnaway, so some get frozen to make vinegar later. Peels can also go into a steamer juicer to make more juice, but you don’t get all that much. A gallon of peels gives about a pint of juice.

Cores go to compost or livestock

If juicing: slices go through the Champion juicer. Juice is frozen or canned. Pulp is made into fruit leather, either right now or frozen for later. (I make a lot of fruit leather and sell it at the local market during the winter). One reason for peeling is that peels make nasty hard bits in the fruit leather.

I’ve presented a workshop on this called “Everything but the pips”. At the end I told them to plant the pips for more apple trees 😀

Time: some of this is an endurance test, standing for several hours peeling apples. Going by yesterday’s session which produced vinegar, dried apple rings, juice, pulp and fruit leather, that took two of us about 3hours. Today we spent another 2 hours for more juice, and pulp, and chicken food.

Hi Kevin, I think all that activity fits under Food Prep and Preservation.  The straw, wood and iron levels haven't been published yet but there will be things related to storing X number of calories or making juice/jelly/dried stuff.  So hold onto those photos and they'll be a number of BBs when the Straw and Wood levels of Food Prep are ready for prime time.

Or another way of putting it is that since they do go in Food Prep, they don't go here in Oddball.  Hope that makes sense...

Ok Mike. The reason I posted it here was more to do with the idea of getting multiple products from one feedstock... but maybe that will come up in the food preservation BBs later on.

Mike Haasl wrote:Much debate among certifiers. Points for roundwood work, points for "get er done", negative points for plastic roof. Final score is 7.5 oddball points.

Thanks, Mike. I understand the negative points bit. Plastic was a bit if a stop-gap until I can install a living roof next year.  I had a heap of it laying around that someone just dropped off here one day.  

So, I should qualify for the Oddball Sand Badge at this point then.  Huzzah!