On Being the Most Useful - A Tutorial Round Up for These Strange Times.
As we head for some sort of lock down here in the UK and with many other parts of the world already there, I wanted to round up some of the resources we’ve produced in the last few years that may be of help- whether you are looking for something to do with kids as you face a long period at home with them, are worried about your food supply or are maybe just looking for practical ways to be useful in your community.
Learning to bake bread isn't going to solve any of the world's problems. Eating fermented foods will not completely prevent you from being unwell. You probably won’t be able to live completely from the land if you learn how to forage for seasonal goods. You will struggle to clothe your whole family with only the cloth that you grow/weave/knit/crochet/sew yourself. Starting seeds now won’t feed your family next week (well, some will, but you know what I mean). What I am aiming for, through our online courses, free tutorials and on farm workshops is to help people become useful. Times are changing, maybe just right now or maybe longer term, and having some extra skills to get through is important. At its very best, you will have the skills to take basic ingredients (where shortages are fewer) and turn them into something useful for your family, your friends, your neighbours, your community. You will have a bit more resilience and be less at the whims of wider systems. At the worst, you will have a good loaf of bread for your tea - probably better than you could get at the store any way. To me, it seems a no brainer.
Our Online Courses:
Everyday Sourdough - learn to make delicious sourdough bread easily in your home kitchen. We take you though making your own starter, maintaining it, baking bread and using sourdough in a range of other kitchen goods.
Intro to Fermentation - fermentation is an age old way of preserving food, that is increasingly shown to have a range of health benefits. We talk about fermenting the basics like sauerkraut, as well as making your own pantry staples like vinegar.
Natural Home and Beauty - learn to make your own soaps, cleaning products and skincare with simple ingredients. There will be no soap shortages in your house (seriously, each batch makes at least a kilo of soap!) with recipes for hot process soap that are ready to use in 24 hours.
Intro to Canning and Preserving - learn to put up fresh food for later. We cover all the basics from safe canning to dehydrating to freezing, plus tons of seasonal recipes!
Our Free Tutorials:
We have a range of sourdough tutorials that get you up and baking the most basic loaves in about a week.
You can make cold processed soap in about 4 weeks.
Want to ferment some of that wild garlic that is in abundance?
Make some pantry staples like veg stock
We also have so so many free tutorials saved on our Instagram story highlights.
The cartoon at the top of this post is via Milkwood Permaculture who have a range of amazing resources on their blog all about preparedness from a permaculture perspective.
