I'll show my students how to get fresh food for free

On Saturday nights, when many of you will have been getting ready for a night on the town, my routine has been the same: work, and lots of it.

Chopping, boiling, roasting, frying – you name it, Friday nights have been all about serving a pub full of guests.

And now, amazingly, I can relax, just like you.

I no longer have to spend my Saturday evenings tied to the oven. I'm able to unwind and relax.

Now that I'm a full-time cookery school owner, my hours are very different. Our courses tend to run during the day, which is when I used to get my rests. And my evenings are now free, which is when I used to do most of my work. It's a treat.

I don't expect that pattern to continue for too long. A lot of people who've enquired about booking work during the week, so we're looking to introduce evening classes. Before I know it, those cherished evenings during which I can relax and unwind with my wife and children will be taken over once more. I'll be working five-to-nine, as well as nine-to-five.

Before long, I'll also be getting ready to hit the road. In recent weeks, I've received a number of requests from people who want me to go and cook for them, as a private chef, in their own homes. There have been enquiries about cooking at parties and functions: who knows where it will end?

I quite like the idea of working as a private chef. I've spent more than ten years honing my skills in the kitchen of our former gastro pub, in Shropshire, and now it's time to put into practice many of the things I learned.

Cooking for private clients is a blast. You develop a good working relationship with them and make sure you deliver exactly what they want. It's completely different from working in a restaurant, where we offer a menu and people make their selections.

When you work privately, people will ask you to help design a menu with them. They'll come up with suggestions and you'll adapt them to make it work. It's funny, but when I ran a restaurant and was cooking every day, it was difficult to go out into the region and cook privately.

Now, however, it's much, much easier. I have a cookery school with what-seems-like unlimited space. I have more than a dozen ovens, instead of one or two, so I can cater for big events.

Of course, I still get to cook at Brompton, which I love. In coming weeks, I'll be showing people how to get maximum flavour for free – by going foraging in their local woods, hedgerows and farms. On June 11, I'm running a course with foraging expert Liz Knight, of Forage Fine Foods, and we'll explore the wild tastes of foraging.

Liz has a passion for everything wild: from fruits and nuts to the wild herbs and plants that were once so much a part of our gardens, our store cupboards and our tables. We're planning to take people into our kitchen garden at Brompton, a few yards walk from the cookery school, before heading along thedgerows to see what's available.

We'll be working together on the day to show people how they can get delicious food from ingredients in and around their garden. I can't wait to get started. Food literally doesn't get any fresher than that.

Marcus Bean is a regular on ITV This Morning. He owns the Brompton Cookery School, at Atcham, near Shrewsbury, on a National Trust Estate.