I BITE into one of Val Snape's white chocolate and raspberry cookies and it tastes like summer. The feeling you get on one of those blue June mornings we've been blessed with this year, warm, fresh and somehow timeless.

As I visit the Little House in Woolsery, home to Val, her family, and to The Little Pantry business she runs, she is in the middle of baking 800 biscuits.

She starts to talk about an impending visit from the local playgroup, and her concerns about keeping up with the garden now that the Woolsery Open Gardens Weekend is just around the corner.

Later on she tells me that when she worked for Surrey County Council she unwittingly did the work that used to be done by two or three staff. No fuss, no bother. It's not the first time that one of these interviews has left me exhausted. I soon find out where she gets it from.

"Just like mother used to make" could be Val's strapline. She was blessed with one of those old-fashioned mothers in an old-fashioned household. All tumbling children and a constant mist of flour hanging in the air in the kitchen.

Not only was Val one of five children, but her mother had worked for National Children's Homes and later became a child minder, so playmates were never an issue. What Val remembers most are the parties. Anyone's birthday was an excuse for a fabulous bake up.

"They were always so exciting," remembers Val. It was clearly an influential period for them all, as three of the five siblings chose catering as a career.

So it's no wonder that Val's produce has such a wonderful traditional feel.

"They're old recipes, things I grew up with, but tweaked," she says.

It's pure home baking. There is nothing artificial in her cakes and biscuits, and it is all as fresh as it can possibly be.

At Guildford Tech, back in the 80s, Val was named Catering Student of the Year, and went on to win bronze at the International Catering Exhibition at Hotel Olympia in London. She remembers her tutor close to tears and close to strangling her with his congratulatory hug. It was the first time the college had ever won anything.

From college Val went on to work in hotels across the South of England, ending up as manager. After her sister moved to Chawleigh she felt herself being drawn more and more to Devon, and fulfilled a promise she made to herself that she would be living in Devon within six moths once she had made her mind up. She bought a house in Buckland Brewer, applied for three jobs and was offered them all.

Looking at Val's operation now, it's staggering to think that she only set out on her own less than a year ago. She left her last job last July, and immediately arranged a stall at the Woolsery Show.

"I sold out and didn't stop after that until Christmas Eve," says Val.

Now Val runs a very modern, highly professional operation. It's all food hygiene certificates, trading standards officers and customer profiling. Yet for all that, it's pure pleasure to her.

"Sometimes I don't feel like I'm working," she says, "I'm enjoying myself too much. There's something about making treats for people."

The pleasure principle clearly extends to her customers. As she says on her website: "Let me spend my days baking the kind of goodies you would make yourself, if only you had the time."

If you'd like to sample The Little Pantry's biscuits and cookies, meringues and flapjacks, quiches and pasties and the rest, you can visit Val at Hartland Farmers' Market on Sunday, July 4, 10am-1pm (Hartland Parish Hall). She also sells at Bideford Farmers' Market, and supplies the village shops in Bucks Cross, Woolsery and Abbotsham. You can even buy straight from her front door on a Friday.

You can find out more about the Little Pantry at www.the-little-pantry.co.uk or call Val on 01237 431900.

You can find out more about Hartland Farmers' Market by calling me on 01237 441 786 or e-mail rod.landman@virgin.net