A Pear Story

I am amazed by the group that follow my foibles, the surprises, the of-course moments, and the successes of daily farm life. Last week I was visiting with a good reader of my stories, my people. The reader I was talking to mentioned the post with the picture of canned pears and I promised to do a post about a story that happened many years ago.

My reader mentioned that the pears looked so pretty, almost too pretty to eat.

My pears do not always look like this, diced into bite sized chunks, there are years when I don’t can at all. This year with the load from the Bartlett tree, I was forced to do something with the buckets that were full before they became too ripe to do anything but feed the cows.

Decades ago, I had a huge amount of pears on this same tree. I was working more than full time away from the farm and did not have time for canning. A very dear friend offered to can pears and split the sealed jars with me so both of our pantries could be filled. I thought it was a wonderful idea.

So as not to overwhelm my canner friend, I would only gather the pears that fell each day from the tree. Within a day or two, the pears would be ripe enough to peel and can.

She showed up at the farm with the first half canner load of jars. They were beautiful quart jars of preserved pears. They were cut into perfect quarters and positioned in the jars with precise regimen, bright white soldiers lined up for inspection. I sent her home with the next batch of fallen pears from the tree.

A couple of days later she showed up with another half canner of jars. These had spices added. Some had cinnamon and some had vanilla extract added. She said she was bored with plain pears. (BTW the vanilla pears were a big hit at my household!!) I gratefully placed the pears in the root cellar pantry and sent her home with the next load.

As planned, she came to the farm after a few days with jars that were not quite as the previous ones. These looked a little less precise, the quarters were no longer lined in the jars. Large pieces and small pieces were thrown and packed in together in a real hodge-podge. It didn’t faze me, the pears looked more like my canning style, and it did not matter if they were neat rows or jammed in. What did concern me was the color.

My friend had said she was getting tired of the plethora of pears and decided to change up her canning style by adding a packet of Jello to the jars. She had delivered some that were lemon yellow and some that were lime green. The Jello pears did liven up the panty shelves with their colors and the flavor added only a hint of lemon or lime which worked out fine for the winter of pear eating.

But when the next half canner load of pears arrived and they were bright orange and berry blue with her Jello additions. Worried that another batch may be even wilder than this I said that we had more than enough canned pears for the season and brought an end to her pear canning experimentation. She was happy to end her contract.

It was wonderful to have had a friend willing to do canning in exchange for filling her own supply,  but we had neon jars glowing on the dark pantry shelves for several years before getting enough courage to eat blue pears. And now I can my own and just let others do them the way they like.