About the Author

Victoria Osborne is a born-again peasant. Having worked at a variety of jobs including riding teacher, deck hand on a traditional three-masted schooner, school registrar, business manager, and specialist antique dealer, she has now turned her hand to telling others about the skills she has picked up over the years. She has experimented with self-sufficiency, living on a smallholding in Wiltshire where she has kept chickens, bees, rabbits, quail, sheep, pigs, horses and, most recently, a working donkey. She grows her own vegetables, cures and smokes her own bacon and ham, makes bread for sale and for her family's consumption. She has made wine, baskets, soap, preserves, and built a replica Iron Age roundhouse, as well as a coracle. She has most recently been studying for a PhD in artisan cheesemakers, only giving this up when the natural curiosity of the peasant took over! Visit her website at www.thecuriouspeasant.co.uk