Pound Pears

                Mark and I made a pilgrimage to the local Pound Pear tree this morning and picked up sixteen very large, hard pears.  It was a bit of a workout carrying them home in our daypacks, but they did curve nicely around my spine, unlike the complete works of Shakespeare.

We love the pound pear—it has been around, perhaps, since Roman times, and there are documents going back to the 16^th century, at least. It is a Homestead fruit, planted as part of an orchard for winter eating. The pears are rock hard when they fall, ripe, from the tree and they never soften. It is not a fresh-eating, delicate fruit. But, it keeps. If you pick them before they fall,  they will last for months. Then, in late winter, you can stew it down on the back of the stove for some loose, sweet fruit on toast.  If I had space, I would plant one.

This particular tree is in the back of a local park, near some houses, on the edge of town. It must be the last tree from an old orchard. It is fifty feet tall and all of the fruit is far above our heads, even with a fruit picker. It’s unassuming, shaped like the other, younger trees in the area, and about the same height. You wouldn’t know there was anything different unless you walked close and spotted the pears on the ground in mid-November. They range in size from a large eating pear to two fists together. They are hard; many of them are still not bruised, even after falling from the high branches.  They do weigh a pound!  We hunted down the best looking ones, avoiding the splits and chomped edges.

When we came home, I hacked up five of them, whacking them hard with my knife, cutting out the cores and bruises, and tossing them into the crockpot. I added some fresh ginger left over from making cough syrup and a cup or so of water and turned it on. They will cook down for several hours until they soften. At that point, I will taste them and add a little sugar or honey, but they will be remarkably sweet on their own. The rest are tucked in the larder, waiting their turn for the pot. We will finish them up in our January oatmeal and yogurt.