Western Morning News

Relaxation and festive creativity on the farm

A local craft centre in a rural Cornish location is hosting its Christmas Fair this week.

- Rupert Metcalf reports

IN these tough economic times, a healthy serving of festive cheer will surely be very welcome, and that is what a very special craft business in south-east Cornwall is set to deliver on a journey down a farm track this weekend.

Cowslip Workshops, near Launceston, is staging its 2022 Christmas Fair tomorrow evening and during the daytime on Saturday and Sunday. A park-and-ride bus service from nearby Homeleigh Garden Centre will ferry visitors to and from the fair.

Cowslip is well known in the Westcountr­y and beyond for the staging of stitching and quilting classes, mostly hosted by founder Jo Colwill, but more is on offer at the rural location at Newhouse Farm, on the road from St Stephen’s to Egloskerry. It has a shop packed full of fabrics, patterns and gifts, as well as a deservedly popular café.

Cowslip is always busy, but challenges have not been hard to find in the past three years. As well as the coronaviru­s pandemic, which halted visits to classes and the café, and the daunting state of the economy, Jo’s husband, Stephen, whose family had farmed the land at Newhouse Farm for generation­s, passed away in April this year, after a long illness.

“The farm has been in the family for over 125 years,” Jo said. “Stephen loved it so much, and he was dedicated to it. He wanted to stay here [despite his illness].” Asked about how they met, she replied: “I brought my horse to Launceston Show, and he asked me out in the evening. I said: ‘If you take me, you have to take my horse as well.’ We were both passionate about the farm, and he was so sad when he had to give up farming. Our neighbour farms the land now, and we try to grow food for the café on the land we still use.”

Just before the pandemic struck, assistance from the European Union’s European Agricultur­al Fund for Rural Developmen­t helped with the transition from farming to the craft side of the business. Jo explained: “I had a grant in 2019 to do my new workshop, to change Stephen’s milking parlour into my second teaching room. Despite Brexit, they [the EU] still monitor it.

“It was hard to get it [the funding], but I couldn’t have done it without it. It made me focus on wanting to keep the business going, because it was scary in lockdown. When lockdown first came and we didn’t know about furlough, we all wondered how we were going to pay the wages with no income. I think we’ve done well to keep 20 staff through Covid, and we’ve increased the staff since then.”

Surviving the pandemic was not easy, but help was available. Jo added: “We got some help from Cornwall Council, and that helped us pay the rent. We did go on a VAT holiday for a year, but we’ve paid that back now. We’re also repaying a [Government] Bounce Back Loan, and NatWest Bank has been very supportive.”

The hardships of the pandemic have been followed by this year’s economic crisis and, in common with every small business, Cowslip has been far from exempt from rising energy prices. Jo said: “Everything here is electric. We do have a biomass boiler, but the pellets for that have gone up three times.

“Brexit has hurt us, too. During the lockdowns, we built up our overseas sales from the shop nicely, but that has gone now because of the cost of the export legislatio­n. We have to put the source of origin on every piece of fabric. We need a trade agreement, business is suffering badly.”

‘I started on my kitchen table, with friends coming to learn, and it has built from there’ JO COLWILL

Despite all the predicamen­ts, Jo and her team at Cowslip do their best to make it a place people want to keep returning to. She added: “When people come here, I try to make it a nice step out of the world. It has been harder to relax, but the classes are beginning to come back.

“People do come a long way for the classes. Last week we had people from Staffordsh­ire, Oxfordshir­e and Bristol, and the week before we had a lovely lady from America. We all work together to try to support each other.”

The classes are integral to Cowslip’s reputation in the UK and beyond. “We’ve been doing classes for 13 years now,” Jo said. “I started on my kitchen table, with friends coming to learn, and it has built from there. I try to have something for everybody, but stitching classes are the most popular because we have a shop full of fabric. We opened the shop in 2003, and the café has been going for 15 years. We also do classes in quilting, patchwork, hand embroidery and machine embroidery. We try to make them social events.”

This week’s big event is the Christmas Fair. Jo said: “We’ll have over 50 stalls. We have a lovely wood worker, we have embroidery, stitching, clothes, pottery and jewellery. I try to have people who hand-make all their goods locally, rather than import them. We’re doing a raffle for Children in Need, too.”

It promises to be three days to remember in a beautiful rural location, with craftsmen and women and good causes who deserve support. Visitors to Cowslip can see all the hard work that Jo, Stephen and her loyal team have put in to make the place a gentle and restful place to while away some time.

 ?? Pictures: Cowslip Workshops ?? > Above: A quilt made at Cowslip Workshops. Top left: Shop stock. Lower left: Jo Colwill (seated) hosts a class. Below: Cowslip’s café
Pictures: Cowslip Workshops > Above: A quilt made at Cowslip Workshops. Top left: Shop stock. Lower left: Jo Colwill (seated) hosts a class. Below: Cowslip’s café
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