A NORTH Somerset farming business will be serving luxury food to celebrities and VIPs at the forthcoming music extravaganza, V Festival.

A NORTH Somerset farming business will be serving luxury food to celebrities and VIPs at the forthcoming music extravaganza, V Festival.

Attracting some of the world’s best bands and musical acts, along with thousands of fans, the festival is held every August in Chelmsford.

This year, those lucky enough to venture into the festival’s VIP Virgin Media Louder Lounge will have the chance to sample delicious food from field&flower.

Run by James Flower, aged 24, and James Mansfield, aged 27, from a farm in Walton-in-Gordano, the business specialises in providing beef steaks, burgers, sausages and joints from a small herd of grass-fed Hereford and South Devon cows. They also source free range woodland English pigs and English lambs that graze on the Mendip Hills.

Just three months after setting up, they were approached by Virgin Media and invited to make a pitch for the catering job at the V Festival.

James Flower said: “We are really pleased that we managed to get the job.

“We hope to use it as a stepping stone for the next year to do some similar events. Maybe some other festivals such as Glastonbury.”

The business was set up after James Flower, the fifth generation of the Flower family to produce beef from Home Farm, met James Mansfield, who used to work at The Ivy restaurant in London, at the Royal Agricultural College in 2006 and realised they both shared a passion for food and farming.

They teamed up with Andrew Venn and began catering at private events.

As well as this, field&flower is also focused on selling meat boxes via its website www.fieldandflower.co.uk and delivering to customers all over England.

James Flower said: “We were convinced that we could combine James’ experience in upmarket catering with my family’s long history in beef farming. We wanted to meet the growing consumer demand for high quality fresh farm produce with an environmentally-friendly provenance but firmly believe we didn’t need to become a slave to the supermarkets to achieve it.”