Pears

[heavyhitterokra]

I noticed today, there was no thread on Pears, so I added one.
  
Feel free to post comments.

These are Bartlett Pears.  I planted these Pears back in 2005.  They have never bore over a handful of pears in all those years since, because they are located in a low spot that receives heavy late frosts.  Our house is about 30' feet below grade from any of our neighbors, so we get all the cold air in Spring.

This year, however, this tree pear tree is so overloaded with fruit that I will be forced to thin it substantially or the weight of the pears will break most of its branches.
 This tree is so over burdened with fruit, that its branches are pressing hard against my Farm kitchen windows.  In last night's storm, it sounded like a heard of cattle were trampling over the tin roof, as the pears pummeled the side and top of my Summer Kitchen.


It's kind of ironic, how hard they are trying to get inside the very place where they will be processed for Winter.

[heavyhitterokra]

Josh and I are baking a pear pie this evening. We're hoping it closely resembles an apple pie.

We sliced and dehydrated a half bushel of them, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, but we've already eaten them all. Oh well,  We've still got three more bushels of pears in storage.

[heavyhitterokra]

That pear pie experiment turned out gooooood!

I just used an old apple pie recipe and substituted pears in place of apples

[john]

I love pears, they are a challenge for me to prune, their tendency is to put out vertical growth which needs to be brought to a more horizontal position for best fruiting. Ron I bet your pear branches have been trained nicely by bearing so heavily. A local orchard uses up to ten percent of pears in their apple cider. No other cider even compares to it. It is really good. You can't tell that their are any pears in it, but you do notice the flavor is better.

[macmex]

When I was little my father made a cider press, using a bicycle frame, grinder and motor. He produced quite a bit of apple cider. It was great! I remember that cider made from Golden Delicious apples had a very different flavor than that made from Jonathan or McCoun, which were the other main varieties we had. Vaguely I remember that he made some pear cider, and that it was wonderful!

[heavyhitterokra]

My Mother-in-Law makes pear brandy. I'd rather have George's cider though. I use the brandy to make glaze for my Christmas hams, so it does serve a purpose. One bottle of that will last me several years.

[john]

George, You're right about Golden delicious, they have a unique flavor, I really like a pie or crisp that contain a few of them.

[heavyhitterokra]

Josh and I are running paper thin slices of ripe pears through our electric meat slicer. Then, we lightly sprinkle them with sugar and cinnamon before dehydrating them. They are awesome!

Thanks, George, for planting that idea in Josh's head. We've made several jars of those this year. I don't think they'll last the winter though.

[heavyhitterokra]

I'm hooked on pear pies now. I'm working on another one tonight, for baking tomorrow morning.  They are crisper than apple pies, because the pears do not cook to mush the way apples do.

[heavyhitterokra]

These Bartlett Pears have incredible keeping power!

I put a half bushel of Bartlett pears on the bottom shelf of my commercial refrigerator, back in October or November. Today is February 6th.  They are still in the original wooden fruit basket and are still good to eat.

When fully ripe like that, they are soft,sweet, and very juicy. I am still using them for pies and for dehydrating, as they have a much sweeter flavor now than they did when first harvested.  These make an excellent food pantry fruit.  The only thing I've found that keeps this well are sweet potatoes, and Old-Timey Cornfield Pumpkins.  I kept one of those OTC Pumpkins for a year one time and still used it to make pumpkin pies the next season.  

I still have my 9-pound sweet potato in storage.  I should have given it away last Autumn, as we had so many of them to eat that no one will want anymore of them until next Fall probably.  I might use it to make a sweet potato pie for Valentine's Day, or maybe cook it for Easter.  They also have incredible keeping power!

My Kennebec Potatoes are still keeping, but they are full of sprouting eyelets.  They won't be too much longer for this world.  I don't imagine I'll have many of them make it until Easter, but that's okay, as we've eaten about 200 pounds of them so far to put 4 adults through the winter and have about 50 pounds of them still on hand.  They are more of a staple in our diets than are pumpkins, pears, or sweet potatoes.

Between my garden, the deer I killed while it was eating my garden, my laying hens, and the hogs we raised last year, we've not needed many supplemental groceries this winter.

[heavyhitterokra]

George,

I'd be really interested in seeing a drawing of your dad's homemade cider press. That sounds very interesting. Especially, if the pear tree continues to be so prolific.

Of course, I've had this pear tree for over a decade now, and it never had more than three pears on it in any given year, before 2019. Frost always got most of its blossoms in year's past.  2019 was an exceptional harvest.

[john]

My wife has been after me to build a cider press for years. I haven't gotten around to it, yet. LOL .
So true about the keeping ability of some types of squash. I kept a big max pumpkin for a year and a half. It lost about twenty pounds over that time frame. I didn't know that pears would keep so well. I have a couple asian pear trees and I usually leave a bunch of pears on the trees. They stay on the branches and can be picked late into the fall. (Up to Thanksgiving sometimes) . They are very sweet and still crisp as long as the temps don't get too ridiculously cold.

[macmex]

I wish I could diagram my dad's cider press. All I recall is that he ran a grinder using a motor, mounted on an old bicycle frame. I was fascinated, watching him put apples in the top and seeing the juice and pulp churn out at the bottom. I think I was only about 7 years old at the time.

[heavyhitterokra]

John,

Here is a URL to an Etsy listing of an antique wooden cider press that has enough photos that I think a guy could copy and draft his own version pretty easily.

www.etsy.com/listing/610712587/vintage-hand-cranked-apple-grape-grinder?gpla=1&gao=1&utm_campaign=shopping_us_theuglyottoman_sfc_osa&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google&utm_custom1=0&utm_content=10255754&gclid=CjwKCAiA4Y7yBRB8EiwADV1haT-9dLuGYXr_onqFfQHJz1nUulNf4dMwVLGp451eoFk3Gmvj9XBWwxoCLvMQAvD_BwE

The interlocking sprockets and steel bar stock spindles could be ordered online if you can carve your own wooden crushing rollers by hand. I did some work similar to that back in the '80s and '90s using seasoned Sassafrass wood. I also used quite a bit of cherry for things like that. They are both easily worked or machined and would not splinter easily during the grinding/crushing process. More importantly, they are both inert woods and would not hurt you to eat a few splinters.

From the look of the apple grinder in the photos, I'd be guessing it was made of Northern Sugar Maple.  Some up North call it "Rock Maple".  That's just because they've never seen a Black Jack Oak tree, or a Bois d'arc Tree.  Talk about rock-hard hardwood, those two will draw sparks off your chainsaw teeth!