A Pear Explosion

We have a semi-dwarf Bartlett pear tree in the middle of our back lawn.  Last year it had about 5 pears on it, and this year it has about five thousand.  I kid you not.

The pears are falling off by the box full.  We've picked up or picked off the tree about 10 boxes.  Easily 200 lbs I'd say.  That's not counting the many pounds the dogs have eaten, and the many more pounds of pears still on the tree.

We finally had to put a fence around the tree because when you have a dog (Calli)
with no bowel control and limited bladder control, and what goes in must come out....well it wasn't always a pretty picture down in the basement in the morning.

This year I just wanted a small fence around it.  A couple of years ago we had a heavy duty fence that was awkward for us to get into.  The pears didn't get picked up in time, and we had hundreds of rotting ones under the tree.

This year we've been pretty good at collecting them.  I bagged some up and took them to the farmers market, but they weren't really a roaring success.

There are still more pears on the tree, and they are still dropping off.  Did you know that you don't leave pears on the tree to ripen?  If they ripen on the tree they get brown in the middle and  are not very nice.

Of course the fruit didn't get thinned.
  Therefore we have a lot of smaller pears.  And because they haven't been sprayed, the skins aren't the prettiest things.

Who cares.  

Slice one up at the perfect ripeness, and they are cool and sweet and juicy.

The dogs love them.  So do the sheep and the chickens.
No pears are being wasted.  What we don't get peeled and bagged and into the freezer get thrown over the fence into the chicken fields.  They get the peels and cores too.
Larry peels, and I core and slice the pears.
It takes an awful lot of pears to make up eight cups worth.

I add some lemon juice and squish it around in the bag so all the bits get coated, and that way it stays mostly white.

There will be a whole lot of Ginger Pear jam being made in the future.

Today I added another fruit that we have loads of, and made Blackberry Pear jam.  Sweeter and only half the seeds of regular Blackberry jam.

And while we are working away at the kitchen sink, we have sights like this just outside the window to entertain us.

Where there's a Luna there's a way!

And notice she took what looked like the biggest pear out there.