A farm near Axbridge has beaten the chill to produce its first crop of the year.

Trays of the summer fruit are being packed up and shipped off to local ASDA stores. Shoppers have in some cases refused to believe that the berries are English and assumed that they were grown abroad.

But Andrew Le Prevost, 61, at Tanyard Farm Nurseries in Cheddar, who has been in the trade for 13 years, emphasized yesterday that they were 100 per cent west and thought to be the first in the region this season. Grown under glass, the berries are carefully heated through late winter to ripen them. He says that one reason why his nurseries have produced fruit before other farms is because rocketing fuel costs have deterred some producers from stoking up the temperatures. “Oil prices have been so high that a lot of people haven’t heated as much as usual", he said. “When we took them to the supermarket we were amazed at the amount of people saying 'they can’t be English'. The strawberries are being sent out, straight from the farm to ASDA stores in the West.