VILLAGE fete jam maker Janet Weeks is hoping to go out with a bang at this year’s event in Fitzhead with more than 2,000 jars of jams, marmalades, chutneys, and jellies to her name.

The annual Fitzhead Fete, which raises money to help maintain St James the Great Church and the Tithe Barn, will be held in the Cricket Field on July 27.

And Janet’s kitchen cauldron has been red hot this year as she has prepared a record number of more than 300 preserves to be sold on her produce stall.

Retired nurse and health visitor Janet began selling her jars of jams and chutneys in 2018, two years after she and retired mathematics teacher husband Colin moved to the village.

She has continued each year, apart from during the Covid lockdowns when the fete was not held, and regularly brings in more than £600 just from her stall.

But, now aged 74, Janet said: “I have just run out of energy. At my age, I am thinking I have done my bit.”

So, for the last time Janet has again filled her garage with hundreds of jars ready for this year’s fete and hopes to break her £620 fund-raising record.

“I have never made so many jars as I have this year,” said Janet. “There are so many I cannot count them.

“I start in the winter and I have probably made 75 jars of marmalade, and then in the run-up to the summer season I make anything with the fruit in my freezer.

“Anything which needs to be used up I turn into jam, jelly, and chutney.”

She loves to throw in spices, and creates mixes such as plum and cardamom jam, marmalade with rum, ginger, and lime, ginger, garlic and apple chutneys, and even a tomato chilli jam.

Janet said she could not do it without the support of the rest of the village, who leave empty jars and lots of apples and other fruit and sugar on her doorstep, which saves her the expense of buying everything.

She said: “It makes me quite emotional to think people give me these things because they know why I am doing it.”

Janet began making preserves before moving to Fitzhead when she lived in a house with a garden full of apple trees and vegetable plots in which to grow things.

One of Janet’s ‘secrets’ can be found in a book by her ‘recipe guru’ Pam Corbin, who advocates reducing the sugar content in preserves.

Janet said: “Although sugar preserves jam, it also dulls the taste, so my raspberry jam comes alive in your mouth, it is very fruity.

“I love it because it makes jams taste so different.”

Indeed, Janet’s raspberry jam has proven to be internationally popular as one purchaser has twice travelled from New Zealand to attend the fete and buy four jars of it.

A legacy of which Janet is proud is the village’s group of ‘chilli heads’.

“Some like it very hot,” she said.