Today I started my day by sending a couple of kids to pick several sample pears from the trees we were given permission to pick from.  The owner told us that he didn’t think they would be good to eat, that years ago they had tried and found them stringy.  So I wanted to assess for myself what it was actually like. 

Turns out that they were good – they’re tiny pears, each big enough to fit into the palm of your hand.  They’re not yet ripe so it’s the perfect time to pick them.  Three of my shorter kids (6, 7, and 9) wanted to pick more pears after breakfast, so I agreed.  They came back after a while with a nice amount, though not as much as I expected. Because of their height, they had a hard time reaching them, but enjoyed the picking and still managed to pick 15 pounds or so (which is a lot of pears, when you consider that each pear is only 2 – 3 ounces!).

A little after they came back, I needed to go out, so I told a couple of my kids to walk with me in the direction I needed to go, and left early enough to have some time to pick pears together with them.  My 15 year old son and 7 year old daughter came with me.  We had so much fun!  First of all, my son and I could easily reach a lot more pears.  And then my son devised what turned out to be a very fun game for both him and my daughter – after picking all the pears that we could reach, he vigorously shook the branch, so that pears from higher up came falling down, and her job was to watch where they fell and gather them as fast as she could.  It was very cute.  And it was very effective.

Within probably 20 – 30 minutes of relaxed picking, we gathered 43 pounds of pears.  So I have about 60 pounds of free pears that are now ripening in my home (well, it’s less now, since all day long little hands have been reaching into the bushel basket that’s holding them all and taking them out to snack on).  I’ll let them ripen for a week or so before I do anything with them except use them for snacking. They’re tasty, but very, very hard. 

Have you ever noticed how after you come up with an idea, others will happily follow in your footsteps?   Someone saw my younger kids picking, and asked for several of the pears, so they could see if they would ripen in their home.  They said that if the pears ripened nicely, they would ask the people we got them from if they could also pick them.  And someone else I spoke to last night suggested we give her some of the fruit we pick.  Hmm.  Though all the people we spoke to were very receptive to us, can you imagine how receptive they would be if bunches of people were knocking on their door and asking? 

I definitely would like to go back in a few days and get more.  My mother in law has a food mill that she uses for applesauce, and I think it would be useful for pear sauce, too, and she agreed to let us borrow it.  Our family goes through huge amounts of food, so I can’t imagine that we could pick more than we could use.  Cooking and canning the pears will be next week’s project, assuming they’re ripe enough then.

Avivah