When we purchased the property that is now Oliview, it came with a LOT of trash that we didn't want, but it also came with previous owners' plantings. We've been lobbied, on a number of occasions, to remove some of the older stuff, and occasionally we do try cutting out an old (sour!) grapevine or an invasive plum tree or seven... but we LOVE our pear trees. They don't look like much: there are three of them in various stages of limb loss, and no matter our attempts at pruning, there's a pretty high dead:live material ratio in two of them, but they PRODUCE! I joked with Pedro's mother last week about it being the food crop on the farm that we do the least to, and it is the most productive!
Pears are an interesting fruit: they ripen from the inside to the outside. Therefore, it is tricky to figure out when they're ripe! We've been picking one/week for a while, now, and leaving them in paper bags for a week to see if the off gassing of ethylene gas (a natural off gassing of a number of fruits that encourages ripening) will allow them to ripen to an edible consistency. Off the tree they're rocks, you see. The flavor is great, but the texture is hard, hard, hard. Waiting just a week or two allows the pears to ripen, soften, and get this mellow, honey-pear scent that is just divine.
We leave pears at the tippy top of the tree, as well as those the birds have already gotten to (grumble!), because they look so beautiful AND because it's a lovely way to attract a diversity of birds to the yard when there's not a lot of other things to eat.
The bees like them, too, as do the birds. And both species are much, much better at sensing ripeness than we are! When we start seeing bees around the tree, and pears are getting little bee-mouth holes dug out of them - not dismissible, as they can finish off an entire pear! - then we know that they're ready, for sure, and we need to get out there and get picking!
One of the toughest-looking trees: it has survived at least one round of fire blight that we know of (in our five years here), and I'm sure there have been previous years with similar challenges. I use a 10-foot ladder, since it's not as scary at the top as some of those 16-footers!
Pears, pears, pears! I am a sucker for seasonal harbingers, and what more can you do to say that autumn is coming that pick a tub of pears?