Harvesting Pears With a Little Help From the Goats

Five bushels of pears later..

We finally got around to picking our pear trees.

Our first harvest from our Red Bartlett tree.

The goats waiting at the fence row hoping we will share.

They were perfectly happy to dispose of the less than desirable pears.

We were very happy to get our first Red Bartlett. This is our first full size tree and it took a couple of years to produce. The other trees are Bartlett (dwarf). The only difference between the  Bartlett and Red Bartlett is the coloring.

I was a little disappointed that a lot of the pears were on the small side. We didn't thin them out enough and the end result was a lot of small fruit. I guess it will be a good year to try Pear sauce!

We also noticed a brown coloring on the pears. I looked it up and it is called "Russeting". I was happy to find out that even though it is not attractive, it doesn't affect the quality of the pears.  It can be caused from high humidity, rainfall, cooler weather, and heavy dew.  We had the perfect conditions for it this year.

Pear Facts:

Pears are picked before they are ripe. If you allow pears to ripen on the tree if affects the texture (gritty) and stone cells develop.  It also affect the flavor. You want to pick fruit when they are light green in color.

Ripening can take up to ten days. To speed up ripening you can store them in enclosed plastic bags.
Pears should be ripened indoors at temps. of 60-70 degrees (ideally) 

The pears are picked and now we wait!