Black and red harvest from the Rhön

If you have a farm in a loca­tion like Neuhof-Tiefen­gruben in the Hessian Rhön region, you can’t make ends meet with run-of-the-mill methods. You have to break new ground, be versa­tile and specialise.

This is exactly what the Reith family did when they started growing elder­ber­ries 14 years ago. This berry fruit is culti­vated by five other growers in the region, who have come together to form Beerenge­mein­schaft Rhön-Vogels­berg GmbH to have it processed and marketed collec­tively. Around 22ha of elder­ber­ries are currently grown on the member farms, two hectares of which are on the farm of Annemarie and Willi Reith and their daugh­ters Kerstin and Stefanie. 

2 hectares of elder­berry grow on the Reith family farm.

Over the course of the summer, the elder­flowers develop into…

… ripe elder­ber­ries.

Family, neigh­bors and friends join the harvest

When the elder­berry harvest is due in August or early September, the harvest crew is noti­fied via What­sApp: The whole family, in-laws, neigh­bours and friends then meet at the organic-certi­fied farm just outside the village. On this sunny August day, the harvesters use seca­teurs to sepa­rate the lusciously hanging fruit from the branches. The chat­tering in harmo­nious company becomes live­lier as the last elder tree to be harvested -which is less than four metres high – gets closer.

Kerstin Oswald is right in the middle of the harvest and seems happy with the haul. “The quality is very good this year and the quan­tity is average”, says the 37-year-old. She will soon take over the 25ha mixed farm on her parents’ land.

Diver­sity with berries, pigs, cattle, calves, millet and miscanthus

Diver­sity is key: In addi­tion to elder­ber­ries, currants also thrive on the family’s land, some of which they have leased in addi­tion to their 25ha. They also raise 50 pigs for market, keep just under a dozen Wagyu cows, rear calves for a dairy farm, grow millet for a biogas plant and, in addi­tion to conven­tional grain crops, have a small patch of miscanthus which they supply to a horse owner for bedding.

Yield of around 20 tons of elder­ber­ries on 2 hectares

Kerstin esti­mates that around 20t of elder­ber­ries will be harvested this year before the third and final picking of the season. Elder­ber­ries, some of which were harvested in spring and processed into drinks, there­fore repre­sent an impor­tant source of income for this versa­tile farm, which is cut off from areas to the east of the trans­port axis by the nearby motorway 66.

The whole family helps with the harvest — including Willi Reith, …

Neigh­bors and friends …

…. and lend a hand.

However, the amount of work involved in this nutri­tion­ally valu­able fruit is enor­mous. “To control the elderberry’s biggest enemy, the vole, the roots are wrapped in chicken wire,” explains Willi. “We also culti­vate the soil several times a year to deter the mice and to keep grasses and herbs short.”

However, the main crux of the work comes in winter, when the Reiths care­fully prune the elder trees (sambucus nigra). “You have to go around the same tree several times to finally get the pruning right,” says Willi. They even use the trim­mings, which end up in the farm’s own wood­chip heating system.

From elder­berry to pure juice

The Beerenge­mein­schaft Rhön-Vogels­berg GbR was orig­i­nally estab­lished to jointly market currants as a colouring agent for the chem­ical industry. However, nothing came of it. Later, elder­ber­ries were added, which are processed into seven prod­ucts (including 100% fruit juice and nectar) at the nearby BioContor Elm GmbH press. Most of this goes to the food retail trade, while a smaller amount is marketed at local markets and in farm shops.

The nearby juice producer BioContor Elm takes care of processing the berries.

Here, the freshly harvested elder­ber­ries are turned into …

… juice and soft drinks.

For many years, the press also destemmed and processed elder­ber­ries from other busi­nesses in the Rhön, which then ended up at the Bionade produc­tion facility in Ostheim in the Bavarian Rhön. Although the press no longer works for Bionade and focuses more on “exciting new devel­op­ments” with a full order book, the red Bionade helped make Rhön one of the main elder­berry growing regions in Germany. According to the Federal Statis­tical Office, exactly 354ha of elder­berry were culti­vated nation­wide in 2024.