In a previous post, I mentioned that we picked 124 pounds of pears. When I grew up, we had a pear tree. We often picked the Bartlett pears when they were yellow because a yellow Bartlett pear is a ripe Bartlett pear. Right? WRONG! There is a trick to picking a perfect pear, and I’m going to tell you.

First of all, did you know that you don’t pick pears when they are ripe? You pick them when they are mature. Pears ripen from the inside out. If you wait for the pear to feel soft enough to eat, it will be rotten in the middle. Like the ones I ate when I was little.

How do you tell if a pear is mature? You gently lift the bottom of the pear, tilting it to a horizontal position from its usual vertical hanging position. If the stem detaches it is mature. If you are dealing with Bartlett pears, they will still be green but the brown spots will be noticeable.This is step one.

Step two is to put them into cold storage. Pear farms put Bartlett pears into a cold storage of 30° for a couple of days. They need this dip in temperature to ripen properly. Bartletts only need a couple of days. Winter pears such as Anjou, Bosc and Comice will need two to six weeks.

Step three is to bring them out of cold storage and set them out to ripen at room temperature.

How in the heck does a home farmer find space to put 146 pounds of pears in a 30°environment for two days? We don’t. Some went into the extra refrigerator (that was already mostly full of other things). The rest went to Michael’s office which is mostly built into the side of a hill. With the air-conditioning on all day, it was as good as it gets.

We could have left the ones in the refrigerator longer. It would have given me more days to can them. Pshaw! It’s canning time people. That means it’s time to get.it.done.

For those of you out there with one or two pear trees, the refrigerator is your place for cold storage.

Before I thought of the downstairs, I contemplated asking the fruit store at the end of our lane if they would put them in their refrigerators and allow them to keep half of them.

I hope this was a helpful post.

Enjoy a pear,
Karen