"Joe himself remained the same as ever, picking his early fruit and laying it out in crates, making jam from windfalls, pointing out wild herbs and picking them when the moon was full, collecting bilberries from the moors and blackberries from the railway banking, preparing chutney from his tomatoes, piccalilli from his cauliflowers, lavender bags for sleeplessness, wintergreen for rapid healing, hot peppers and rosemary in oil and pickled onions for the winter. And, of course, there was the wine. Throughout all the summer Jay smelled wine brewing, fermenting, aging. All kind of wine: beet root, pea pod, raspberry, elderflower, rose hip, jackapple, plum, parsnip, ginger, blackberry. The house was a distillery, with pans of fruit boiling on the stove, demijohns of wine waiting on the kitchen floor to be decanted into bottles, muslins drying on the clothesline for straining the fruit, sieves, buckets, bottles, funnels, laid out in neat rows ready for use".
