The first year we owned Glen Burnie there were no pears, so imagine our surprise when the next summer hundreds of pears appeared on the innocent looking tree between the kitchen and the pool house.
I have a history with pears. We had a pear tree when I was growing up and truthfully my entire family eventually loathed pears. Later, a wonderful client of Randy’s would gift us a box of pears every Christmas from Harry & David. My mother and grandmother always found this particularly funny. I would have been thrilled yo have any kind of fruit tree except for a pear tree.
For the last 3 years we have forcibly “gifted” pears to everyone we know – neighbors, friends and unsuspecting acquaintances. We bourbon poached 24 jars of pears last year – half of which are still in our refrigerator. So when a hard freeze in early spring derailed a lot of fruit trees we were actually hoping for a smaller crop. Nope – more than ever!
A chance meeting at the Historical Society has given us hope. An introduction to a local cider maker resulted in an offer to make sparkling peary out of this year’s crop. We enthusiastically accepted.
He came by the house to see the tree and was visibly shocked by the number of pears. We are picking 150 to turn into 5 gallons of sparkling peary.
This year our friends and neighbors will get a bottle of peary instead of a bag full of pears. I have a feeling our joy will be contagious!
The Persnickety Pilgrim 