Welcome to the Winter News, where we can reflect on the past year’s successes and look forward to what 2025 has in store. So grab a cuppa, put your feet up, and read on...

The Cogges craft volunteer team have been busy engaging with visitors throughout the year. They ran several busy craft sales at our seasonal fairs and Christmas market, and supplied gorgeous items for the shop, raising funds with their fun take on traditional crafts. You can also see framed art from local artist Steve Legge on show in Cogges Kitchen café.

Cogges Artist in Residence 2024, Alex Long, has a very productive season beautifully capturing scenes around the manor house and grounds. We are excited to share that Alex will be holding an exhibition of his work in the café in spring 2025, with 25% of all sales go to Cogges Heritage Trust. You can see some of his oil paintings at alexjameslong.com. 

The walled garden has been looking stunning all year, thanks to the many volunteers. The garden produces an amazing harvest, from asparagus early in the year to pumpkins at the end of the year. The produce is used all year round by the café, and popular with visitors who can buy fresh veg, plants, farm eggs and more in the shop. The house is kept looking lovely with our flowers, and we had a really good crop of apples which also made delicious toffee apples at the Harvest Fayre.

Over the year, the cafe has used our produce to create amazing cakes - apple cake, gluten free strawberry cake, rhubarb cake, apple crumble slice and chocolate brownies with loganberries or raspberries. The soft fruit also finds its way into Pimms and Iced Teas. Salads made using salad leaves, cucumber, tomato, spring onion, french beans, broad beans, beetroot and potato. Anya potato are particularly good for salad and our Scarlet Emperor runner beans, which are really tasty and have the advantage of not needing stringing, made a delicious salad. In the winter months vegetable soups making use of leeks, runner beans, potatoes, onions and pumpkins. The café team pick Rosemary and Thyme from the 'herb trough' outside their door and Parsley and Basil from the garden. Excess produce, especially soft fruit, is frozen so we can look forward to cakes with soft fruit in the middle of winter. Produce that hasn’t been made use of is made into dog biscuits, the result of café manager, Michaela’s lock-down hobby: apple, cinnamon and oat biscuits, and beetroot, carrot or squash. The goats and guinea pigs benefit from the carrot tops. 

As well as edible produce we have been selling our usual wide variety of plants. As a new venture this year and with thanks to help from Sandra from Larkrise Flowers, our resident florist, we’ve sold many beautiful posies and bunches of garden flowers and exquisite bunches of dried flowers. 

Our spring, summer and harvest fairs were all fantastic, complete with wonderful steam engines and their owners who gave their time and shared their enthusiasm. From vintage sounds from the Big Band in the Barn to outdoor theatre, the farm was bustling with activity all season. The Winchester regiment living history re-enectment group visited twice, and we picnicked and danced on the lawn with The Georgettes of Oxford. It was great to be the destination for the Abingdon-based MG Car Club’s St George’s Day Run in April, and to see all the beautiful cars on display in the farmyard. There were MGs of all vintages, up to present day models – plus a rather gorgeous Austin Healey. The Beer & Cider Festival was sold out, with a day of local music and artisan breweries - the weather proving to be in our favour this year – and we launched our own Cogges brand Giddy Goat Beer, which proved incredibly popular! The Roald Dahl themed Witch’s House was a massive success with families, and Christmas Market and Santa’s Grotto and Light Trail brought sparkle to our hearts. Look out for another packed season of events in 2025!

We’ve had a busy year with private events, birthdays and weddings – look out for a ‘micro-weddings’ offer in the Manor House dining room. This year we had a number of corporate hires, and ‘paranormal investigations’ or ghost hunts are regulars for Spooky-Cogges! So far, we have lots of educational school bookings for spring 2025. We also look forward to Learning Disability Training delivered by Yellow Submarine and refresher volunteer training. We work closely with Abingdon and Witney College and already have students booked in the diary to complete their work experience with us in 2025.

We first started to prepare for the new year in early February 2024 when we introduced Commit and Midnight, our newest rabbits, in time for easter. We also have enjoyed baby Guinea pigs, and in March we hatched the first chicks of the season. In April, the lambs joined us – we went to purchase two orphan’s but came back with nine (which happens when they are looking up at you asking for love and care). Due to the dedication of staff and volunteers, some of whom came in for night feeds, we saw them all into good health. After two weeks of feeding, it was time to hand over to the public. They were comical and never behaved, often escaping and skipping around the farmyard. Once off the bottle and grazing they were turned out into the fields where they have enjoyed the summer. They have since returned to their original farm for the winter, happy and healthy, having enjoyed a great start in life. 

Sadly, we had to say goodbye to some of our goats – Mary who had an incurable heath condition and her condition worsened, then our lovely Jonathan and more recently Branson and Timmy, who were very old and lived a long, happy life at Cogges. We also recently said a sad farewell to old lady Patsy, one of our rescue cats, who was a real visitor favourite with her grumpy demeanour and heart of gold. 

Right at the end of summer we hatched ducklings and again these were great fun, with children loving seeing them swimming in the tub for the first time. We also saw the arrival of Max and Billy the Royal Gurnsey goats, who settled in instantly and are extremely chilled out despite their large size. Thanks to the animal team and volunteers and farm manager Kirsty. We - and the animals - are all looking forward to welcoming our visitors back from half term!

We'd like to end by saying a big THANK YOU to all our volunteers, trustees, partners, visitors and friends for their time and support through this year and the care, creativity and hard work put in by the whole team to ensure the very best for Cogges. 

Cogges Manor Farm is open for half term from 15th February and we look forward to seeing you in 2025.