For the past month and more, the kitchen garden has been reaching an ever-intensifying crescendo of production. Despite a very disheartening start to the growing year, with successive sowings and crops succumbing to the cold, wet and ensuing molluscs, things have picked up in recent weeks. Although there have been some abject failures – a garlic crop badly impacted by rust; the sudden ripening and rotting of all our plums and gages simultaneously in early August; every single chicory, chard and late lettuce seedling and young plants of Cavolo Nero eaten by slugs – there has been enough produce to balance the disappointments. As the harvests start coming in, the preserving keeps me busy in the kitchen day and night.

First were what we could rescue of those precocious plums which, due to the scarcity of the yield, were mixed up, stewed and put straight into the freezer. There they joined what remains of last year’s plum harvest, which was fortunately more impressive, so we will still have mirabelles and greengages for winter puddings.