A Turning Point in the Year

Around the twenty-second or twenty-third of September, the autumn equinox arrives and the day holds its own against the night for one last time. After that, the dark gains a few minutes each evening and the year tips towards the cold half. In older British custom this was harvest home: the last of the corn carried in, the reapers in Cornwall "crying the neck" as the final sheaf fell, and Michaelmas geese fattening for the end of the month.

It is a good reason to light a fire in the garden, cook something slowly over the embers, and say out loud what you are thankful for. You do not need a farm or a field. A fire pit, a heavy pot, and a few people willing to sit out under a blanket will do it.

Building a Fire You Can Actually Cook On

Light the fire an hour before you want to eat. Use seasoned hardwood — ash, oak, or apple prunings if you have them. Green wood smokes and spits, and nothing ruins a fireside meal faster than a face full of acrid smoke.

The single most useful thing to know is that you cook over embers, not flames. Flames scorch the outside of a pot and leave the middle raw. Build a small pyramid of kindling, feed it with thumb-thick sticks until it collapses into a bed of coals two or three inches deep, then rake those coals flat with a poker or a green stick.

• Set a tripod over the fire, or rest the pot on two stout logs either side of the ember bed.
• Keep a small side fire burning to top up the coals as they die back.
• Have a bucket of water, a lid, and a pair of thick leather gloves within reach. Sparks travel on an autumn breeze.
• Position the fire so the smoke drifts away from where everyone is sitting.

A Stew for the Turning Season

Crown Prince or butternut squash is the heart of this pot. Cube it, toss it in a little oil, and roast it first if you have the oven on — it deepens the flavour and stops it turning to mush. Otherwise, add it raw and trust the barley to hold everything together.

Fry two sliced onions in the pot until they go golden, then add the squash, a couple of chopped carrots and a stick or two of celery. Stir until everything takes a bit of colour, then cover with stock — chicken, vegetable, whatever you have — and add a good handful of pearl barley. Lid ajar, simmer for about forty-five minutes, stirring now and then so nothing catches.

Then the apples. Two Bramleys, peeled and diced, go in for the last twenty minutes so they collapse and sharpen the whole pot. A handful of hedgerow blackberries goes in with them if you have been out picking. Rosemary, thyme and a bay leaf early; salt only at the end, once the barley has softened and you can taste what you have. Serve with a dark rye bread and salted butter.

Apples Baked in the Embers

Save room for pudding, because this is the part people remember. Core a Bramley or a Cox's Orange Pippin almost to the base, fill the cavity with porridge oats, soft brown sugar, a knob of butter and a pinch of mixed spice, then wrap each apple in two layers of foil.

Bury them in the embers, not the flames, and leave them for twenty to twenty-five minutes. Check at twenty: the skin should be wrinkled and the fruit collapsing but still holding its shape. Lift them out with tongs, unwrap carefully — the steam is fierce — and eat them with cream or a spoon of cold crème fraîche.

Tales for the Dark Half

Cooking over fire slows everything down, and the waiting is exactly when stories belong. British folklore is full of this season. The last sheaf of the harvest was believed to hold the corn spirit — often called the Old Woman or the Maiden — and it was plaited into a corn dolly, brought indoors, and kept until spring before being ploughed back into the first furrow.

Tell the tale of the two brothers who wrestle at the equinox, one of light and one of dark, neither ever winning for long. Or the older, stranger version of the lantern: a hollowed turnip with a candle inside, carved to keep wandering spirits at a distance, long before anyone thought of pumpkins.

Keep the stories short, tell them in the round, and let the children add their own endings. The point is not accuracy. The point is that someone is speaking while the fire works.

Gratitude and the Slow Season

Before you go in, bank the fire down with ash and save the charcoal for next time. Say thank you properly — for the garden that produced the squash, the hedge that gave the berries, and the people who turned up with a bottle and wet shoes.

That is the whole ritual, and it has been the whole ritual for centuries. Mark the balance while it lasts, welcome the darker evenings, and plan one more fireside meal before the first hard frost takes the garden.