Spare Pears

The pear harvest

We picked most of our pears from the big pear tree in the back corner of the yard yesterday. We've tried a few and they're pretty yummy - Sofia is loving them. It is about 15kg worth of pears with not too many bugs in the fruit compared to the apple trees (which look a bit grim). They're not all completely ripe yet but apparently pears keep ripening once they are picked.

Unfortunately because the garden was neglected for a while, including while the fruit was forming on the trees, there is quite a codling moth problem in the apples, pears and quinces which we need to work on for next season. Apparently having chickens running around the garden is a good way to control codling moth - just another reason to get some chooks soon.

There's no way we were going to eat all of the pears so we decided to try drying some of them. That meant peeling them.

No shortage of pears to peel and slice

 Getting rid of all the buggy bits and the cores.

Some were better than others

Then slicing them and pre-treating them in a mixture of water and lemon juice to stop them from oxidising and going brown.

Sliced pears in water and lemon juice plus the scraps

Then we stuck them in the dryer for at least eight hours...

In the dryer at the start. I love the way they look like chips

Nine hours later they were ready to be stored away for later consumption. As you can see, the pre-treatment didn't really stop them from going brown so next time we might go a bit harder on the lemon juice or just cheat and buy some ascorbic acid.

After nine hours in the dryer. Ready to go

The finished product (there is another jar too).

The first jar

A lot of work for two jars of dried pears but they are seriously yummy.