Pears Aplenty

Early this past spring, I hired a guy to come out and see what he could do with the lovely antique pear tree that shades the garage. Last summer, it had produced only about a dozen little, gnarled pears, and I wondered if it might be made to do better. The man said it was in fine shape, and ought to bear many more pears after a good pruning. Then he basically shaved the poor tree and left it bare naked. I thought he'd killed it, but he was right.

I've been watching the pears get bigger all summer, happy to see that there are indeed many, many more of them. This past week I thought they were looking pretty full sized, so I went over to investigate and saw, to my surprise, that they were already falling off the tree of their own accord. So I picked all of them that I could reach. I don't know, technically, how much a bushel is, but I bet it's not twice as many.

I don't understand these pears. They are big, bigger than most grocery store pears, but they are all hard as rocks. You can bite into them, barely, but the flesh is dry and crumbly, not nice at all. I poured them into a drawer for storage, and they made clinking sounds, I kid you not, as they tumbled together. I don't have the vaguest notion what to do with them. I need to look in a book and see if pears ripen off the tree or not. Maybe I could boil them and can them in syrup? 

Maybe I could buy a slingshot and keep them by the bed as personal protection.