Self-sufficiency might not come easily to everyone. Decoding the fairly simple instructions on the back of a seed packet shouldn’t be a problem, but what about baking bread, making cheese or herding your own flock of hens around the garden? That might take a bit more thought.

So the Soil Association has teamed up with Stony to run A Taste of the Good Life, a series of free classes in the essentials of self-sufficiency.

The classes fall into three main areas: harvesting, cooking and making, giving you a crash course in bread baking, bacon curing, flour milling, bee keeping, fleece spinning and creating your own herbal remedies, among other things. They’re spread around the country and run from now until the summer, depending on the course you choose.

There’s only one snag: to get a free class you have to join the Soil Association, which costs £24, so think of it more as a joining gift than an out-and-out freebie. Existing members get a 50% discount.

Full details can be found on the Taste of the Good Life pages.

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self sufficiency, self+sufficiency, soil+association, education

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