Making jam isn’t such an unusual pastime, but making 600 jars a year is a bit unusual. This issue introduces you to Karen Libby and her passion for jam.

Karen Libby’s happy place is her kitchen. This is fortunate, since she spends a lot of time there, making jars of jam and marmalade – about 50 a month, or 600 a year. This is odd, as neither she nor her jam widower husband Brian are that fond of it, apart from a bit of red grapefruit marmalade every now and then. The finished jars don’t stay in the house long, however. They are taken up to the library, where they go for a scrumptious and bargainly £2 each, with the proceeds making a welcome contribution to library funds.

Lancastrian by birth, Karen met Brian in the forces and after tours in Cyprus, Germany and Northern Ireland, they found themselves in Barrow. Over many years working at Midland Bank (later HSBC) in Loughborough, Karen found herself perfecting her jam-making technique undeterred by a troublesome first go during her forces days in Cyprus. Her first attempt at marmalade created something so knife-bendingly hard that the military might have been able to use it for armour had she been able to create it in sufficient quantities. No such trouble since then though. Word has got around. The jars fly off the shelf at the library and keeping up with demand isn’t easy.

As we stand in the kitchen, an impressive cast iron preserving pan is bubbling away with the latest batch. It’s early afternoon and Karen has already limbered up with 22 jars standing neatly in rows on a shelf: marmalades from Seville oranges and red grapefruit; apple and blackberry; plum. By the end of the afternoon, they will be joined by red and blackcurrant, which is what are currently bubbling away together in the pan. This is a ‘boil’. A boil produces 5lb (about 2¼kg) of jam or marmalade. All that goes into it is fruit, sugar (Karen uses jam sugar, with the added pectin helping it to set) and the juice from a couple of lemons, which also aid setting. And that’s all.

It's quite early in the year when we meet. Seville oranges are still just about in season, but blackberries, apples and plums certainly aren’t. So where does she get them from? And where for that matter does she store them? It is at this point that it becomes apparent that there’s more to this operation than a very busy preserving pan in a kitchen. And, indeed, there is something of the military about the organisation behind it all. Karen has a squadron of suppliers of most of the fruit that she uses, which also includes, at various times of the year, strawberries, raspberries, gooseberries and rhubarb. And on top of this, there is a fleet of freezers dotted around the village full of fruit waiting to be requisitioned for the next boil. It’s an intriguing thought as you walk round the village that you’re probably never far from a jam-making depot of one kind or another.

So, if you fancy something delicious on your breakfast slice of toast, then nip into the library during opening hours, buy a jar or two and see what you think. Do please return the cleaned empties to the library when you’ve eaten it all – and consider donating any other clean, empty 1lb (454g) jars that you may have lying around. Rhubarb and raspberry, anyone?

Guy Silk