Pears, pears, pears

It seems we spent all of this past weekend working with pears. We have two trees that over the past couple of years have produced around 200-300 pears per year. We spent quite a bit of time peeling and cutting and cooking pears. Is there anyone but us that still cans their own pears? Other than, maybe, Mormans? Winnie also has made up about three separate batches of pear sauce, and even did a batch of pear chutney.

Next year is liable not to be so good. One of our trees seems to have fire blight, and I'm trimming out the dead parts as best I can. Unfortunately, I'm afraid it may have progressed too far, and we'll lose the whole tree. With no cross-polination for the other tree, we'll get nothing next year. I think I'm going to start looking around the yard for another spot to put a second tree.

We also, finally, got a decent batch of sour cherries this year. Usually we lose them all to the birds. I planted a second tree this year, but we don't expect that to produce anything for a year or two. I got at least enough to make a couple of batches of preserves. Yum!