Our resident robin has performed a few tentative serenades, and I’ve had to rescue my morning condensation window cloth from under the sink – autumn is on its way.

Thankfully, however, although squashes have started appearing in my weekly Growing Well cropshare bag, they are the glorious younger cousins of the more robust winter squash family – courgettes, round squash and patty pan squash, for example.

With the green ‘football’ of a courgette I collected this week (pictured), I made a smooth, garlicky soup with the flesh, which I also flavoured with a little smoked hot paprika from Ged Fowler’s Cark-based Chilli Pepper Company. And I served it with a drizzle of the new Agnes Rose Chipotle Oil, from Kendal, which is made with smoke-dried jalapeno chilli.

I’ve yet to use the patty pan squash, but according to my kitchen ‘bible’, Dorling Kindersley’s Cook’s Book of Ingredients, along with the rest of the summer squash family they are excellent paired with bacon, Parmesan, basil, curry, cinnamon and olive oil, so plenty of opportunities for experimentation there.

Courgettes were also on the menu when I called Burton in Lonsdale Stores for this week’s Checkout recommendations. Grown in the village, they are on sale at £2.50 per kilo.

Burton Stores also have locally-grown Discovery apples in now (only £1 per kilo), Wilja potatoes from Pilling (90p per kilo), and English leeks (£2.50 per kilo) and cauliflowers (£1 each).

I rather fancy the cauliflowers would be fetchingly dressed in a delicious blue cheese sauce. Just up the road at Country Harvest in Ingleton, deli counter manager Janet Faraday’s recommendation was for Yorkshire Blue (£1.70 per 100g) or Swaledale Blue (£2.22 per 100g).

Either top your cauliflower cheese with some pan-fried crispy Woodalls Cumbrian smoked pancetta (£3.95 for 200g) or Woodalls Cumbrian air-dried ham (£6.25 per 200g), cooked the same way, from The Honeypot at Hawkshead. Or, serve alongside some grilled sausages or a grilled pork chop.

For this week’s bargain – especially if you share the cost with a friend – I would heartily recommend investing in a whole or half, bred-on-site, Greenlands Farm Village rare-breed pig.

Buying in bulk like this these tasty porkers come in at only £3.50 per kilo, a half pig weighing up to 30 to 40 kilos.

In return, your investment will give you sausages, minced pork, diced pork, roasting joints, boneless rolled belly pork, and a whole leg joint.

Two more butcher bargains this week from Dales butchers at Kirkby Lonsdale, where you can buy a kilo of rump steak for £10 and from Sillfield Farm at Endmoor where you can purchase two Cumbrian chickens for £6.

Talking of which, I do like to alternate my carb accompaniments so, because we had roast potatoes with our slow-cooked Heaves Farm rose veal topside last night, I am going to serve polenta with our roast chicken tonight, which will be flavoured with some of the chicken juices as well as lots of salt and pepper.

The veggies will come in the form of a rich ratatouille made with seasonal home-grown courgettes (perhaps the most famous of our summer squashes) a little diced carrot (I often add diced swede as well), diced sweet peppers, no onion but a can of drained red kidney beans instead, lots of tomato puree, garlic, thyme, and a pinch of dried chilli.

Divine.