Harvest is such a great time for gardeners and at this time of year we have fruit and vegetables making up for the muddy digging in the winter and months of patience paying off.

In the first few years after these currant bushes were planted on our plot I had to commit myself to the practice of hand-squashing the caterpillars of the sawfly as they crawled and ate their way across the leaves, stripping the plants bare as they left their homes in the earth below to climb up the bushes. I ticked the box of organic, even if it wasn’t particularly vegetarian of me, but now we have stronger plants that can provide us with ingredients for Summer Pudding – and that’s not bad!