This year I got a somewhat good pear harvest. I mentioned previously that one tree produced somewhat well one year. Many years they fall prey to late freezes. Fireblight has been a problem--very much so this year. I was able to keep more or less ahead of it through pruning and spraying through June. I'll be more diligent about dormant- and early-season spraying this winter and next spring.
Both Kieffers produced well this year, but squirrels swarmed the trees. In late July and early August, I saw squirrels running across the grass with pears in their mouths--not good. The pears were still nowhere close to ripe. They basically stripped one tree bare--the one closest to some cover.
They attacked the other one, too, but I did get about 20 pounds off of it. I picked them at the end of September, when they were falling to the ground. Those I canned. As was my practice the last time I did this, I did not peel them. I just cut them right down the middle after removing the stem, then used the knife to cut out the core. Then I halved the halves, and in most cases, cut them again, dividing each pear into eight pieces.
I have previously noted that I don't usually get as much in each jar as advertised by sites such as the NCHFP at UGA. The UGA site says that raw pack yields poor quality, but I like the result. In one of my previous pear posts, I mentioned that Jill Winger got good results with raw-packing unpeeled pears (she didn't use any sugar, however; I used sugar at a rate of 1:3, i.e., 1 cup sugar per 3 cups water.
I cut up 16 pounds of pears, getting 13 pounds after trimming. Those went into 12 quarts and 1 pint, requiring about 19.5 cups of water, 3.5 cups of sugar. I processed them for 30 minutes in an atmospheric steam canner.
There were some additional pears on the tree that I stashed in the refrigerator; I may try to do more preserves. But the main canning duty for this year for the pear harvest is done.
They also dehydrate well, but not this year...
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