I returned home from a fortnight’s holiday earlier this week, during which time our regular weekly articles have been on hold. After an ebullient welcome from Wren I dropped my bags in the house and made a beeline for the vegetable garden and polytunnel.

I had spent the week before we travelled madly crossing tasks off a seemingly endless vegetable garden job list. First of these was to clear the tomatoes from the polytunnel, which had finally succumbed to blight. Given the cold, wet summer I had been concerned that we would not have a comparable harvest to previous years. I normally start processing tomatoes for the pantry in early August, but this year they did not come on stream properly until the third week. Then it was all systems go.