Our fifth harvest supper! Like last year, our harvest was relatively early and much of our produce was finished by the end of September. But this year we did have leeks – funny little green wisps in March, huge fat stems by September.

We started with two great leek soups: a smooth leek and potato soup followed by a spicy leek and sweet corn soup. We would have used the sweet corn from the garden, but that was finished by early September. Then a tasty vegetarian moussaka, made using our courgettes rather than aubergines, a salad of home grown tomatoes and lettuce and to finish, a lovely pear and apple crumble with our wonderfully aromatic fruit and a verbena water ice. Again Chris’ pinwheel wholemeal bread with a filling of basil (from the garden of course) and cheese was a delicious accompaniment.

Sweet corn and leeks – two things we tried this year for the first time and which were really successful. Our raspberries weren’t great this year – they probably got too dry – and the tomatoes outside in the station garden just didn’t ripen, though the greenhouse tomatoes were good. Courgettes were OK, but they went spongy pretty quickly. Pears were very good, but the apples and plums were a little disappointing: maybe it was the aphids. No two years have been the same …