Canning Pears

Besides my own pear tree that is producing wonderfully this year, my mother has several pear trees.  Early last week she sent an S.O.S. for too many pears, and my husband loves canned pears, so off we went.  It was a rainy morning and we had to delay our plans over an hour waiting for the rain to clear.  I will not soon forget wrestling that pear tree in 90% humidity with rain dripping off of the leaves.  It was hot.  And the yellow jackets were trying to defend their fruit.  I swear those things will follow a ripe pear right into your mouth.  You have to be careful.  A few of them body slammed me but no one was mad enough to sting.  There was plenty for everyone.

You really want to pick directly off of the tree.  Pears ripen from the inside out and a pear that has fallen is not only likely to be bruised, but will also be too far along in ripeness to handle easily when paring.  If a pear is NOT almost ripe, you basically can not pull it off with a picker, no matter how hard you try.  My husband and I picked one bushel from the Bartlett tree and another bushel from an unidentified tree which I believe is a Seckel.  They are beautiful pears.  After being dragged through the wet orchard, and sweating from my eyeballs I had to do a Walmart run.  Man that all wiped me out.  This was one of the first times that "normal activity" made me feel old.  I had to take a nap.

My next door neighbor had offered to help me can pears.  Actually what happened is that I offered to bring her pears and she didn't skip a beat before saying "Misery loves company.  I'll do it if you do it with me." That's fine.  I've never actually canned pears and she has a gas stove which is so much better for water bath canning.  And I wanted to do quarts which my turkey fryer method is not optimal for because of the number of quarts it holds (doesn't hold).  Neighborlady used to can pears a lot when they lived down the road and had a pear tree.  And her mother canned pears so it was a nostalgia thing for her.  We spread the two bushels out in her barn to ripen and cull through.

 So far we have canned two batches of 7 quarts each and have used about half of these pears.  Pears continue to ripen at room temperature and we can choose the perfect stage to can them.  Also, as we got comfortable with what our yield was going to be, we got a lot more liberal will culling instead of trying to salvage as much as we could from a knotty or bruised pear.  

It is difficult to explain how to tell when a pear is the perfect ripeness.  It is that moment when the skin begins to feel alive.  The color also changes subtly from green to gold and the blossom end takes on a russet color.  (I've had a lot of practice because for several weeks I have had a basket of pears on my counter. 

 As soon as they mellow they go into the fridge basket to chill for eating.  A Bartlett pear must be a difficult crop to get to market looking pretty.  These all have some degree of sooty blotch on their skins.  And they are not particularly easy to peal.  Juice galore.  No wonder store bought canned pears have no taste.  They must have to process them green when they still have not developed any taste.

Well they all eat the same.

Nothing compares to the taste of home canned pears in light syrup.  For years I have gone to the county fairs and wonder how canned goods are judged.  Well!  I sure could judge the canned pears now.  I know exactly what variables there are.  Headspace.  Color.  Packing.  Purity of the syrup.  Spots on the pears.  I almost want to do one quart with the best pears just to see if I could turn out one at my personal best.  Below is my share of the first two batches.  We are taking a break today (Neighborlady processed tomatoes yesterday and she's a bit whooped) and tomorrow is another canning day.

I am no canning expert, but if you would like to know more about the process of canning pears, here is a link to a good YouTube video that will explain it well.