Sims 4 Cottage Living Guide: Henford-on-Bagley

Released in July 2021, the Cottage Living expansion pack remains one of the most refreshing offerings for The Sims 4. Published by Electronic Arts and developed by Maxis, it takes your household far from the city lights of Del Sol Valley and settles it in Henford-on-Bagley, an English village with a distinct Cotswolds flavour. Here, city careers are traded for milking cows, collecting eggs, and competing for the biggest pumpkin in the county. This guide covers everything the pack actually brings: a new world, a brand-new livestock system, an oversized vegetable garden, a weekly fair, textile crafting, and a lot challenge that shakes up how you play. Enough to turn your Sim family into true gentleman farmers.

Henford-on-Bagley, a full-scale English village

The world included with the expansion is Henford-on-Bagley, a rural town directly inspired by the British countryside — England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland all blend together here, with a clear leaning towards the Cotswolds: golden stone cottages, thatched roofs, flowering gardens, and rolling meadows. The world is divided into three neighbourhoods, each with its own personality and its own lots to visit or buy.

Finchwick, the beating heart of the village

Finchwick is the central hub: a historic mill, a market square, the Goldbloom family's grocery store, the Ladentelle gardening shop, and the iconic pub The Wandering Village. This is where the famous weekly fair takes place, and where you'll run into the village shopkeepers, who will hand out errands for you to run. The mayor, the innkeeper, the farmer, and even the delivery driver each have their own little quest to offer.

Old New Henford and Bramblewood Forest

Old New Henford blends the old and the modern: a handful of ruins, a community garden, family homes, and empty lots ready to welcome your own builds. Bramblewood, meanwhile, is the wildest part of the world. It's home to Cordelia Falls, an island with ancient remnants, and hiking trails populated by foxes, rabbits, and birds. It's the ideal neighbourhood for foraging and quiet contemplation.

Raising farm animals

The pack's big new feature is farm animals. Unlike the Cats & Dogs pack, they don't take up a household slot but instead live in dedicated enclosures and buildings — a chicken coop, a barn, a birdhouse. To get one, you simply order the animal by phone or pick it up from a village farmer.

Cows, chickens, and llamas

• Cows: they're milked every day to collect milk. Depending on the care given and the feed chosen, the quality varies, and the milk can even take on particular flavours.
• Chickens: they lay eggs daily. Rarer eggs can appear depending on happiness, the type of feed given, and how clean the coop is.
• Llamas: they provide wool, valuable for sewing, weaving, and knitting. A good relationship with a llama can yield higher-quality fleece.

These animals aren't just decoration: they need cleanliness, affection, and proper feeding. A neglected herd produces little, and poorly at that.

Wild rabbits, foxes, and birds

Around the farm, your Sim can befriend wild rabbits and birds that appear in the bushes and on birdhouses. Treated well, they'll return regularly to leave gifts: garden vegetables, rare resources, small decorative items. The fox, on the other hand, is an ambiguous prowler: it can hunt your chickens if you don't feed it, but becomes a loyal companion once tamed.

The country vegetable garden and XXL vegetables

The pack takes gardening much further than the base game. You can now grow giant fruits and vegetables — pumpkins, watermelons, eggplants, squash — provided you water generously, fertilize (cow manure, for instance, works wonders) and talk to your plants. These XXL products can be displayed at the fair, turned into a family meal, or sold to villagers for a tidy sum.

• New country crops: chocoberries, night mushrooms, giant vegetables.
• Compost and manure are a great alternative to store-bought fertilizer.
• A well-tended plot can feed an entire family — especially when paired with the Simple Living challenge described below.

The weekly Finchwick fair

Every week, Finchwick's town square comes alive with a village fair. It's the moment to bring out your finest cow, your best-groomed chicken, or your most oversized pumpkin, and try to snag a ribbon in front of the mayor. The in-game calendar shows upcoming dates, and information boards are placed on the square and at the community garden.

The fair alternates between several contests from week to week:

• Poultry contest (chickens).
• Cattle contest (cows).
• Llama contest.
• Giant vegetable contest.
• Plant contest.
• Pie contest, where Sim cooks compete in ingenuity.

The judges assess quality, rarity, and, where applicable, size, cleanliness and happiness of the entrants. Taking part, even without winning, earns rewards and improves your reputation with the villagers.

Planning your livestock week by week becomes a genuine little management game: which animal is ready, which vegetable will reach its maximum size by Friday?

Farm cooking, the simmer pot and the preserving pantry

Your eggs, milk and vegetables aren't meant to sit in a fridge. The pack introduces farm cooking with a rustic recipe book: savory and sweet pies, stews, casseroles, homemade preserves. Two objects are central to this loop:

• The simmer pot, which lets you prepare slow-cooked dishes (stews, soups) by combining several ingredients at once. The result feeds the whole family and can be kept for later.
• The preserving pantry, where you store your homemade jars, jams and pickles to eat later, give to neighbors, or sell.

These two objects finally give value to the production → transformation → consumption loop that was missing from the base game: you pick, you prepare, you jar it, you share it.

Hand weaving and synergy with Knitting Hobby

Country living pairs beautifully with the Nifty Knitting kit. Wool from your llamas can be spun and then knitted into sweaters, socks, hats, or plushies. Your Sims can wear them every day, give them as gifts, or sell them on Plopsy, the game's built-in online shop. It's also a nice source of income for a rural household that doesn't commute into town for work.

This is one of the rare cases where two packs complement each other so well: without Nifty Knitting, llama wool loses much of its appeal.

"Simple Living" and Lot Challenges

The pack introduces several lot challenges, but the most iconic remains Simple Living. When activated on a residential lot, it completely transforms cooking: to prepare a dish, your Sims must have the raw ingredients in their inventory or in the fridge. No more cooking out of thin air — you have to pick the tomatoes, collect the eggs, and milk the cow before putting the pot on the stove.

Other options worth knowing about for scripting a fully rural playthrough:

• Wild Foxes: a lot challenge that increases the presence of foxes around the farm.
• Animal Enthusiast: a new trait that drives your Sim to interact with wildlife.
• Lactose Intolerant: a trait that bans dairy products, perfect for adding a narrative constraint to a household.
• New Country Caretaker aspiration, focused on animal care and integration into the village.

Going Further

Once your chickens are pampered and your first ribbon won, several paths await to extend the fun:

• Build an authentic rustic cottage with the pack's new build items, stone walls, and thatched roofs.
• Combine Cottage Living with Eco Lifestyle or Dine Out to open a self-sufficient farm inn.
• Optimize the trio of the XXL garden plot, simmering pot, and preserve cupboard to attempt a run entirely based on the Simple Living challenge.