I love this time of year. It's blackberry time, and I've got an eye on the walnuts, hoping I can harvest them before the squirrels do. Dad's expertise in the vegetable garden means we are often the lucky recipients of home grown produce.

Of course this bonanza doesn't last. Our ancestors were well aware of this. For them autumn would have been a very busy time.

Modern society has become used to having any kind of food at any time of year. Unfortunately this abundance is ultimately damaging. Air freighted food has a high carbon cost. Ship freighted foods such as bananas fare better, but there is still an environmental footprint to anything that travels to reach us.

There is another impact. Local communities at source suffer as their forests are felled in order to produce food for people living thousands of miles away. And yet in our own country we produce a glut of food we don't get round to eating.

How often do you see apples at this time of year, the grass beneath their loaded boughs carpeted with rotting fruit? In allotments and gardens we end up with more courgettes and runner beans than we can physically eat. What if we were able to eat this glut all year round, rather than accepting there will be some loss?

We can of course freeze fresh produce for eating later. The problem with this is that it requires energy. There's a space for fridges and freezers in preserving fruit and veg, but far better to look at other options.

I don't particularly like jam, so prefer my fruit preserved without sugar. Last year I experimented with a pasteuriser I'd inherited from Mum. The theory was simple and seemed foolproof; put jars of fruit and veg in a vat of hot water and heat to 74 degrees for 20 minutes.

My results were mixed. On some batches I failed to get the heat for long enough to the centre of the jar and so the contents started to ferment.

Since then I've had a lot of success just by cooking produce on the hob, then pouring it into pre-heated jars. I sterilise the lids in boiling water, then lay the filled jars on their sides, to give a bit of extra heat to the tops. In this way I've managed to fill our store with jars of ratatouille, soup and unsweetened stewed fruit. It's super easy and requires no special equipment.

Chutneys are easy to make. You need a fruit base to provide a nice thick texture. Apples are good, but I'll often use pears as they don't keep, so need using up. Simply throw in fruit, any surplus veg, some cider vinegar, brown sugar, salt, plus pickling spices and chilli for taste. Boil on a low heat until thick and put in hot jars with sterilised lids. You can find a recipe online, or just keep adjusting vinegar/ sugar/ salt/ spices in the mix until you get the taste you like.

You may be deciding now what seeds to buy for next year. If you can, include marrows and root vegetables in your vegetable plot. These will keep for months.

When planting an apple tree, chose one that will produce apples that last. We have a large rat-proof wooden box outside our house that we store fruit and vegetables in. This year we were still eating Cornish Aromatic apples in late May. Eating and preserving local food reduces waste and saves money. Time to get back to picking those blackberries…