When Life Gives You Pears . .

We have a Ure pear tree in our front yard. It’s a hardy fruit tree that will survive anything northern prairie weather blows its way. Every spring, it breaks into glorious bloom. Every autumn, it is covered with pears.

That fall off the tree.

(Plop!)

Ure pears are small – slightly larger than a golf ball – and hard as rock. We gather them off the ground as they fall (Plop!) and store them in our basement until they ripen. Pear aroma permeates the entire house, from the bottom-most basement to the upper-most bedroom.

And they keep on falling.

(Plop! Plop!)

Yes, those are ALL pears!

Heaven help you if one lands on you while you are bent over, picking them up off the ground. (Bonk! Ow!) They’re hard as rocks, remember?

The tree continues to shed. (Plop! Plop! Plop!) The wind “helps.” The wind always blows in Alberta and even more so in autumn.

(Plopplopplopplopplopplopplopplopplopplopplop!)

We woke up one morning to the yard covered with fallen pears. We filled a 5-gallon pail, a 2-gallon pail (Plop!), a many-gallon aluminum pot once used to feed cattle, a box (Plop! Plop!) and a medium-sized garbage container.

The pears continued to fall.

We make pear juice. It’s quite simple. Wash and quarter pears, fill the largest container you have, cover with boiling water, cover and let stand for 24 hours. Next day, decant the juice into a pot, add sugar, boil for 5 minutes, put in sealers and process for 10 minutes.

Repeat. And again. Ad nauseum.

(Plop! Plop!)

But why, you ask, don’t you can them? Or make jam? Or other preserves?

They are small, remember? By the time you peel and core them, you are left with pear slivers. It takes a lot of pear slivers to make jam.

I’ve done it. Every five years or so, I get a whim to make something other than juice. By the time I’m finished, I remember why it’s been five years or so since the last time I did that.

And still they keep on falling. (Plop!)

Some of our 51-1/2 quarts of pear juice

We now have 51 quarts (and one pint) of juice, plus four pints of pear compote from this year’s bounty. We’ve decided, that’s IT! The rest are going into the compost bin.

(Plop! Plop!)

Pears, anyone?

#UrePears #PearJuice #EmbarrassmentOfRiches #TooMuchOfAGoodThing #AutumnBounty #Preserves MargaretGHanna