Smallholding, sweetpeas, salad greens, succulent vegetables, a ‘Strine with many strings to his bow and his spouse (from Holland). Somehow David and Anneke have created a rural idyll just three miles from Oxford where you can buy the freshest organic produce and bask in the micro-climate of extravagantly planted acreage with its own pop-up restaurant. The atmosphere is everything- unstructured, very relaxed and unassuming. You sit in a small glassed in verandah if the wind is high, or under a rose-covered arbour in the sunshine. There is bound to be someone you know also having a Sunday lunch of simple Thai dishes, cooked by Ladd and her English husband. Sometimes their youngest is strapped to Ladd’s back while she unhurriedly works in the tiny kitchen, sometimes their older boy will carry a bowl of strawberries and cream to a customer.
Worton Manor Farm is signposted on the small road that runs between Yarnton and Cassington and is not widely advertised. Part of its charm is knowing you are privileged to know about it. The kitchen is too small to cope with more than fifteen or sixteen customers and the prices are befittingly modest to match