Has anyone ever taken a folk school class?

Hi all, has anyone ever taken a Folk School class before? For those who do not know what a folk school is, it is where you can learn simple life skills such as knitting, basket weaving, how to raise backyard chickens, and other things. If anyone has ever taken a class, I'd love to chat as I'm very interested!

Welcome to permies!  I can't answer your question though this thread might be of interest to you:  https://permies.com/t/86990/art/Mastercrafts

This is something I would so love to do. Maybe Permies could set one up? If you could get 10 crafters, a farm with space for camping and sell tickets to work around the workshops over the course of a week? We held drystone walling workshops last year and the were very successful. Amongst the students there were cooks, welders, basketweavers, cheesemakers and knitters. We could have done on for at least a week!
Thank you for that useful post! I hope it sparks lots of discussion!

We have a museum with most all the trades and skills common to a small town 150 years ago. We teach what we call Heritage Skills classes in most of them, most often including cheese and soap making, herb medicine and wild crafting, and fiber arts (which is shearing the sheep and all the steps from raw wool to finished dyed material). We also have classes in primitive skills, including fire building without matches, night time navigation, finding & purifying water, herb finding & use, shelter building, trapping, etc. In addition to the classes, we year around have folks living here with most of them coming thru ic.org & wwoof.org. We mostly do work exchange in the many organic and biodynamic gardens, or animal care (we have beef & dairy cows, heritage sheep, pigs, goats, rabbits, chickens, guinea hens, with horses & llamas now and again). We've had people stay from a day or two to as long as twenty years. We generally supply all the food, they mostly learn about farm life. ~~In the museum we also move and restore 3 or 4 historic buildings a year. You can learn how to acquire and renovate shops, cabins, barns, windmills and such.

Jim & Laura and Becca and lots of kids and others,
Stone Garden Farm (as listed on Facebook & ic & wwoof)
Richfield, Ohio
www.stonegardenfarm.com
www.ohiofarmmuseum.com


P.S. By the way, we are looking for one or two people to come live here long term, with somewhat of a preference for younger women with young children. (We are quite the kids place.)

Wow! That is awesome!

I've taken a couple classes at the Ely Folk School. I try to take one whenever I'm in the area, but since that's usually only a week or 2 each year, it doesn't always work out. It's a lot of fun and they have some interesting offerings. My husband taught a tintype photography class there last year and will probably repeat it this summer.