At this time of the year, the season of mist, mellow fruitfulness and 17 fully grown marrows in the larder, I usually write a pickle epic.

Not just pickle of course – I need to run the full gamut of the preservation table from apricots to – well I can't think of any veg beginning with Z but I'm sure there is one. If there is I've pickled it.

But this year I pause and think. Does anyone really want home-preserves these days?

Is it time to hang up my preserving pan and put away my jam thermometer?

Is chutney dead?

And has commercialisation done away with the need to reduce the autumn bounty in our gardens and shops into pulp to torment our families with for many a month to come?

There was a time when no self-respecting woman would be caught buying jam, certainly in the autumn months. It was as bad as being found in your dressing gown after 8am.

With memories of wartime shortages my grandmother with the reluctant help of my mother, jammed and pickled everything which could possibly be jammed and pickled. And then moved on to things you might not have thought could possibly ever be described as a teatime preserve. If you have never tried carrot and swede jam you won't know what I'm talking about.

And then there was bottling. You could bottle anything be it fish or fowl, animal or vegetable. Dead or alive (I'm joking , probably).

My grandmother's bottling set, purchased in 1938 at a jumble sale, consisted of two dozen huge Kilner jars with lids, a giant saucepan and a yellowing booklet of instructions. The latter included dire warnings of what could happen if you didn't follow the dire warnings.

The main one was called botulism which could, apparently, wipe out the entire family overnight. After I read it I used to have nightmares about our stiffened corpses being found sitting round the table staring sightlessly at the remains of one of my grandmother's bottles of tomatoes. She didn't care, of course. After all one of her favourite sayings was 'a little bit of mould won't hurt you', so she took the risk of botulism in her stride.

She used to keep her bottled produce on shelves at the bottom of the stairs, where they looked distinctly like medical specimens floating in liquid in the half light – especially the gooseberries.

I doubt if anyone bottles these days – there is no need. Nor goes in for home canning, another virulent source of botulism according to an old cookery book I have, along with other life-threatening conditions brought on by careless canning. Mealtimes in those days must have been like playing Russian roulette .

My mother's part in all this preservation was confined to a series of deep sighs as huge pans of boiling fruit blocked the cooker for weeks, and mild remarks about the wallpaper falling off because of the steam. I, on the other hand, joined in enthusiastically with the picking and preparation and by the time I married couldn't wait to continue the family tradition of 'if it can be picked it can be pickled'.

The other tradition was that most of the produce should be free. If you couldn't grow it, you begged, borrowed or - well I won't say stole because my grandmother always said that those blackcurrant bushes were hanging over the railway embankment and if the owners couldn't be bothered to climb over the fence then that was their hard luck. But you get the picture. We rarely bought fruit in the shops. My grandmother's understanding of 'pick your own' didn't include the words 'pay for'. as well.

So when my family were growing up they got home made jam. It may be that in later years they will need counselling to get over the fact that their little teeth always seemed to be full of tiny blackberry seeds in September. This was, however, because they kicked up such a fuss about me suspending the blackberry pulp in a pair of tights over a saucepan to make bramble jelly. I mean to say, they were CLEAN tights so why the fuss?

I got away with home made jam for most of the year by the simple ruse of not buying anything else. If they wanted something sweet on their bread they ate my jam. They consequently grew up to view Hartley's as a forbidden luxury akin to quails' eggs in aspic, only available at other people's houses.

Pickles and chutneys were slightly different. Despite planning menus which consisted of food made more appetizing with a spoonful of chutney on the side of the plate, I never managed to rid the cupboard of the colourful array of preserved fruit and vegetables before it was time to make another batch. I found it very difficult, however, to throw them away, so often I had a small archive of bottles which could eventually end up in a museum. In 100 years time 'rn bn pk 1971' will cause many a puzzled frown.

My own family have inherited a little of the pickling mania. My younger daughter only has to be seen with a tin of Colman's mustard powder for people to scatter far and wide lest they be pressed to receive another jar of piccalilli when they almost certainly still have five in the cupboard.

But nowadays children are sadly suspicious of home-made produce. It's 'look out Nanny's making bread again'. We are producing youngsters who expect all food to be covered in orange breadcrumbs so they don't recognise what part of the animal or vegetable it comes from.

I'm sure they all think chickens have some part of their anatomy called' nuggets'.

I'm not even sure they eat bread and jam anymore, although I personally think they are missing al lot. What could be nicer than a thick slice of fresh cut bread, daubed with golden butter and dripping with home-made strawberry jam? Even the indigestion was worth it..

I don't like shop bought jam, no matter how many health checks it's been through. It's too sweet, it can often be sliced because it has some form gelatin in it, and many jams, especially the cheaper ones, taste exactly the same no matter what it says on the label.

I also get extremely annoyed by claims of 'twice the fruit'. What does this mean?

How much fruit were they putting in before for goodness sake - one berry? Jam is made of fruit and the proper weight of sugar. If you put in twice the fruit you need to double the sugar and you end up with double the amount of jam.

Pickles and chutneys are the same - oversalted or oversweet and with a suspicious consistency which points to starch thickener rather than boiling down the required amount of vegetables and fruit.

I've persuaded myself of course. I need to save the world from monosodium glutamate.

Crash out the preserving pan, out with the Sarsons and the onions.

I've a sack of apples in the garage I've been hiding for just this purpose. Chutney lives . . .