Pear Harvest Time

One of the red pears

It's that time of year again, the orchard fruit are fat and ripe or nearly so. The apples outnumber the pears, the latter being favorites. The pears do not store well, but I'm not going to can any. Yes, my 'country gal' persona ends where the real work begins. 

My first year on Flown Piggies Farm lots of pear desserts were made, and yes, many lbs were gained. (Oh shut up, you'd have gone nuts with a glut of fresh fruit too!). Last year, 2021 the pears and apples fell from the trees so fast - literally overnight - that not a single piece of fruit was enjoyed, except by my neighborhood's population of chubby deer. 

Flown Piggies Farm boasts 3 pear trees. The closest tree to my house has  Bartlett type pears. They might be Anjou pears but would not a pear by any other name still taste like one or the other? 

The second pear tree is itsy bitsy at perhaps 10 feet tall, and it bears small red pears - which are my favorite. This year the dinky tree yielded a whopping seven pears!  To be fair to the tree, it being so small, it is possible that many of its fruit were taken early on by deer, who stand on their hind legs like trained poodles, and pluck fruit. Stupid deer. 

The massive Bosc Pear Tree, sans Partridge

The third pear tree is around 20 feet high and has what I am 99 44/100% sure are Bosc pears. The fruit are brownish gold, large, fat and they have skinny necks. The Bosc are a week or two, if not three

weeks from ripening. There's no clue what to do with them when they do ripen. The tree has hundreds and hundreds of fruit on it. I do know they are the preferred pear for fancy desserts like pears poached in wine. I can feel my jeans tightening just thinking about it. 

And more Bosc...

                                                                                                                                                            I'm bummed that pears can not be stored in the manner of apples. Apples you buy in grocery stores may be as old a year. And pioneers used to be able to store fresh apples in cold cellars, but pears are not so obliging. My neighbor Nita decided that the crop of 2022 was not going to go to waste. She has her own pear tree but it is a couple of weeks behind my trees in fruit ripening. 

Nita picking the bartlett pears

Nita brought over her orchard ladder and and we (OK, mostly she) picked a nice load of pears. 

I picked all the red pears off the little tree and soon we were hauling a big box of bartlett pears into my kitchen. 

The pears are lined up for ripening, one precious globe at a time. 

Ready for drying

A number of pears were ready to go and Nita again came to the rescue. She loaned me one of her dehydrators as well as a slicer (a mandolin) and we set to work, slicing up the ripest pears and settling them on the dehydrator trays. Thanks to the mandolin, we also each in our own kitchens, sliced up our thumbs. Ouch!

Below is a bowl of the resulting dried pears. They look ghastly in the picture, but they are sweet and tasty. I currently have a zillion or so bags of dried pears. I've practically handed them out to whomever comes within a quarter mile of my home. Gotta get that fruit eaten before next year!

Dried pears which resemble dried ears (I know... EEEW!)