There is a particular kind of quiet that arrives in late September, when the lanes are heavy with fruit and the mornings smell of damp leaves. It is the season for slow afternoons with a basket on your arm and a pan on the hob, turning a glut of hedgerow fruit into jars that will see you through to spring. Preserving is not difficult, but it does ask for patience, and that is precisely the point. Whether you gather blackberries from a familiar bramble patch or barter damsons from a neighbour's tree, you are capturing a few weeks of English autumn in glass.

Foraging Well: What to Pick and When

The hedgerow is free, but it is not limitless. Pick with a light hand and leave plenty behind for the birds and for next year's crop. Blackberries run from late August into October, damsons are ready from late August to September, and sloes are at their best after the first cold nights of October and November.

• Pick above knee height where the fruit is cleaner and less likely to have been visited by dogs, and avoid busy roadside verges.
• Take a shallow container rather than a deep bag, so berries do not crush under their own weight.
• Wear long sleeves and gloves for brambles, and take a stout stick or hook to draw high branches down.
• Only pick what you can identify confidently, and never strip a bush bare. If in doubt about a species, leave it.
• Freeze what you cannot use straight away. Most hedgerow fruit freezes well and can be turned into jam on a quiet November weekend.

Blackberries: The Everyday Jam

Blackberries are low in pectin, so they need help to set. The classic answer is a cooking apple, grated straight into the pan, or a good squeeze of lemon juice. For roughly 1kg of prepared blackberries, use 750g of preserving sugar, the juice of one lemon and one peeled, grated Bramley.

Warm the fruit gently with the lemon and apple until the juices run, then bring to a rolling boil. Add the sugar, stirring until it dissolves, and boil hard for 15 to 20 minutes. Blackberry jam is best when it is not over-boiled: you want a soft set and a fresh, slightly tart flavour rather than a stiff, sugary block. A few undamaged berries added at the end give lovely texture.

Damsons: Deep, Sharp and Generous

Damsons are the most forgiving fruit in the hedgerow. They are high in pectin and acid, so they set beautifully with nothing more than sugar and a little water. Their flavour is intense: sharp, winey and faintly almondy, and it deepens in the jar over the winter.

Put 1.4kg of washed damsons in a heavy pan with 300ml of water. Simmer until the skins split and the fruit collapses, then add 1.2kg of sugar and stir until dissolved. Boil for 20 to 25 minutes, then either leave the stones in and warn everyone, or fish them out with a slotted spoon as they rise. For a damson cheese, push the cooked pulp through a sieve, weigh it, add an equal weight of sugar and cook slowly until a spoon drawn through leaves a clean channel. Pot it in small jars and eat it with cheese and cold meats.

Sloes: Patience in a Bottle and a Jar

Sloes are far too astringent to eat raw, but they make the most rewarding preserves of all. The traditional route is sloe gin. Prick or freeze 500g of sloes, which breaks the skins and mimics the effect of frost, then combine them with 250g of sugar and one litre of gin in a large sterilised jar. Shake it every few days for the first week, then weekly for three months. Strain, bottle, and leave it another month before drinking. The spent sloes need not be wasted: cover them with a little more gin and sugar, or simmer them into a spoonable jelly.

Sloes also make a superb sharp jelly to serve with game, and a robust chutney when cooked with windfall apples, onions, vinegar and a spoonful of mixed spice.

Setting, Potting and Keeping

Before you start, sterilise your jars properly: wash them in hot soapy water, rinse, and stand them upside down in an oven at 140°C for 20 minutes. Fill them while both jam and jars are hot, right to the brim.

• Test the set by dropping a teaspoon of jam onto a chilled saucer. Push it with your finger; if it wrinkles, it is ready.
• Skim the scum with a slotted spoon, or stir in a small knob of butter at the end of boiling.
• Seal with a wax disc pressed onto the surface, then a lid or cellophane cover while still hot.
• Label with the fruit and date, and store in a cool, dark cupboard. Most jams keep for a year; chutneys improve after a month or two.

There is something deeply settling about a shelf of your own preserves, each jar a small record of a specific afternoon in a specific lane. Open one in January, spread it on hot toast, and the whole autumn comes back to you.