TV star launches fruit picking harvest in Vale of Belvoir

Gardening expert, Daisy Payne, has been enlisted by Bottesford-based Belvoir Farm to help encourage an army of pickers to get involved.

The business traditionally asks the community to help it bring in the fruit from fields and hedgerows to make its elderflower cordial.

Picking takes place from Belvoir Farm’s own 60-acre organic plantation and from the wild surrounding hedgerows found across Leicestershire and the company’s three bordering counties, with elderflower collectors this year being paid £3.30 per kilo for their flowers.

Ahead of getting involved in the harvest during the crucial six-week blooming season, from late May to the end of June, Daisy said: “I’m delighted to be part of this wonderful harvest.

"I’m a huge fan of elderflower cordial and I look forward to finding out more about these fantastic flowers and how they are transformed into this delicious drink.

"We’re going to need a lot of help from the local community to make it happen, so we hope people will come out in force and join me and I’m hoping they might even be willing to share the classic family recipe with me.”

Daisy will see how the popular soft drink is created, from bush to bottle journey before being shipped nationally and worldwide.

She will be taking up the challenge to pick, infuse and blend the flowers with Belvoir Farm’s trademark sugar, lemon and spring water which go onto making its signature flavour. Daisy will then be bottling, boxing and delivering the limited-edition bottles for customers to enjoy - all within 24 hours of the flowers first being picked.

Pev Manners, MD of Belvoir Farm, which was founded back in 1984, commented: “I’ve been picking elderflowers since I was a young boy, when my mother started making elderflower cordial on our kitchen table to her own original recipe.

"The wonder of our cordial is the fantastic taste, which is developed as the freshly picked flowers gently infuse for 24 hours to provide a rich and fragrant cordial, whose recipe has remained the same for nearly 40 years.

"We’re delighted to say our annual harvest is still going strong and it’s going to be great fun working with Daisy to welcome her into the wonderful wild organic fields at Belvoir Farm. It will give this year’s harvest a brilliant start.

“This year’s bush to bottle challenge will demonstrate the speed at which we can deliver the freshest tasting Elderflower Cordial, transforming these beautifully fragrant flowers into our delicious drinks, straight off the production line and into the hands our consumers.”

The Elderflower Cordial is one of more than 30 soft drinks produced by Belvoir Farm at its Barkestone Lane headquarters.

Working closely with nature, respecting the countryside and supporting sustainable farming to make its drinks, nothing in the Belvoir Farm range contains artificial preservatives, flavourings, colourings or sweeteners - just masses of pressed fresh fruits and freshly picked flowers.