Making best use of apples and pears

PLANT pears for heirs they say, suggesting that the pear tree takes a good long while to bear fruit. We have a very well established pear tree right outside the front door at home, which gives a lot of fruit. I’m not sure of the variety, but I know you have to get to the fruit at precisely the right time – the pears go from bullet hard to suitable only for wasps in a couple of days it seems.

This year I have picked quite a lot of the fruit before full ripeness and discovered that they will come ripe, stored in a cool outhouse in a brown paper sack.

The other pear tree, further up the garden, is a more recently planted conference. It too has given a lot of fruit this year but even though they look ripe on the tree the ones I have tried have been hard and tasteless. Plan B, with a horrid hard pear is to bottle it, either with a syrup to dish up as a desert or with cider vinegar and pickling spices to be served with cold meats. But will a tasteless pear become delicious if treated in this way? I’ll let you know.

The apple crop, as heavy this year as I remember it, is less complicated. The windfalls are being picked up fairly regularly and I’ll be urging various family members to peel, core and either cook with them, or freeze them. The best eaters are still on the tree. The rest will be going to the cider-makers, collected, bagged up and delivered between now and November, when the last tree to fruit generally drops its crop. A lot, admittedly, are left for the birds and other garden visitors. But we get our share.