Picking pears…

One of the things on my checklist this week was to pick the pears we had on our pear trees.

I say this week because if we wait until we get back from Vegas they would have already fallen off the trees either rotting on the ground or the dogs would eat them all. Klausie-boy loves pears. 

Now I know that our pears aren’t the prettiest fruit on the block, but they are delicious. It’s like that old saying you can’t always judge a book by it’s cover. 

This year we had our son Noah’s roommates Fred prune the trees in the early spring. I’ve know Freddy since he was 3 years old and I loved watching him work. 

We asked Fred how he knows what branches to prune and where. He explained the technical side of fruit tree pruning then told us what they say, “You cut between the branches making an area big enough to throw a cat through.”

Big enough to throw a cat through? WTF?  I’m not making it up…this analogy comes straight from the mouths of arborists. 

My question is who thought of a cat? Why not a football, which is something you do throw? It doesn’t matter because whatever Fred did worked and the trees looked so much better this summer. 

Last year, we had a high yield of pears from all three of our pear trees. The pears may have been plentiful, but all tiny. Even though they were small they tasted wonderful proving size doesn’t matter. Apparently, looks don’t matter either because they were ugly suckers. 

This year we only had useable, full size pears on one of the three tree. Two trees are of the anjou variety and the pollinator is a bosc. Most years we have both varieties, this year only green anjou ones. 

A pollinator? It took us flatlanders probably five years to figure out why the two green anjou trees never bore fruit…it needed a different variety for pollination. Once we planted the bosc tree, we had pears. 

Last year, I gave away tons of pears to people. We had literally boxes of them. People were stuck at home because of covid and welcomed the pears. People made all sorts of tasty looking creations. I made a few pear crisps and pear galettes which are my favorite. 

Over the years I’ve made lots of yummy dishes using pears…here are just a few I found on my personal Facebook page:

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The pears we picked on Thursday we put in a milk crate and stuck them in the walk-in refrigerator until we get back. After looked at my pear posts I am definitely going to make that pear and bleu cheese tart with fresh thyme and rosemary. I’m starving right now while writing; practically drooling on myself. 

Hey, have a great Saturday, we head to Albany tomorrow afternoon to spend the night at the hotel near the airport, although we will be officially on vacation after today’s farmers market. 

We are trying a new place in Albany for dinner that comes highly recommended on the “518 Gluten Free” group on Facebook; I’ll let you know how it is.

See you guys soon…I am planning on writing blog posts from Vegas with some photos; I taught myself how to publish a post from my phone. Yay!

***BTW…Please excuse my upcoming vacation posts including this one. Without my laptop my editing may be fair at best but perhaps poor. Just wanted to give you a heads up. 🤓