Born out of the desire to use the fruit and wild plants we found to create products for the community, showing people the potential in undervalued and often overlooked ingredients. Our home county, Cheshire, is best known as a dairy county, however in the past orchards provided important crops here.
Small orchards across the county supplied rhubarb, pears, damsons, cooking apples and plums for market while pears and especially damsons were also used to dye cotton and silk spun in the mills across the region. On our endless search for fruit we found the remnants of these orchards and hedgerows, long neglected but still producing fruit. As we explored, we encountered fruit that we consider far superior for preserving needs compared to modern varieties bred purely for eating fresh.
Over the years our foraging map has grown, often aided by whispers of abundant fruit from people we met at markets and trade shows. As we expanded, the biggest boost to our fruit picking came from the Vale of Evesham. We’ve always had a passion for plums and damsons so Evesham, which was once the centre of plum growing in the UK, has become a special place for us. The plum growing industry there was built around plum varieties that were grown specifically for jam making and ideal for our preserving needs. We quickly found more plums than we ever imagined possible.