Pears

A friend of mine from the Fulda area has a couple of pear trees that produce more fruit than she knows what to do with. Last year she gifted me a number of 5 gallon pails of ripe pears, which I freeze dried. 

This year we planned ahead a little more. Pears are supposed to be picked when they are still green because they ripen from the inside out. If you pick them when they look ripe, you need to do something with them all immediately because they are pretty much overripe. 

She's been keeping an eye on the tree and let me know Wednesday night that they would be ready to pick. I happened to be going to Fulda on Thursday for a "farm field trip day" with my dad, and I recruited one of my sisters to help pick the tree after we got back.

Her height plus the extendable apple picker let us access most of the pears on the tree. 

If I had been thinking, we would've sorted pears as we went- "perfect" ones and damaged ones. As it was, we sorted them at her house later. 

The nieces and nephew got involved. As you can see, the youngest two were most interested in sampling the pears. 

We ended up with one 5gal pail of good ones and about 3/4th of a pail of ones to watch. 

Jaron helped me lay them out on the counter at home to let them ripen. My plan is to freeze dry the bulk of them. Hopefully the timing works out! I have a few busy days next week...