Jim’s mother has the largest pear tree I’ve ever seen, so tall that I don’t know how she and Joe pick the ones up top without bringing in a small crane!
Every year they pick the tree clean and Margie goes into canning mode. In the six years I’ve known her I’ve never been without a jar or ten of her preserves. I’ve not been able to join in one of these marathon sessions but should make the time to do so. I’ve always been a bit freaked out by canning. And since I can’t grow anything here besides windowsill herbs, I’d have to go out and BUY a boatload of whatever I wanted to can, thus going against nature’s bounty and immutable laws.
Generally there are two varieties of preserves: pear butter (Jim is working his way through a quart jar of that); and chunky pears with lots of cinnamon. The chunks are great on top of vanilla ice cream or mixed into yogurt.
We thank Margie for being a frugal country wife, mother and grandmother. She just bought seven goats to mow the pasture. A couple of weeks ago I came back from a visit with pickling cucumbers and baby onions. I hear that next to the term “frugal” in the dictionary is her photo. She actually figured out (she’s from a line of math geniuses that may actually include Alexander Graham Bell, and her son and my husband does calculus in his head but doesn’t have a clue about his shirt size) that every six years the days remain the same so she could re-use paper wall calendars! All she had to do was move Easter and Thanksgiving. We should start buying her pretty calendars every Fall so she’s not tempted to go back to the old John Deere.
A few months ago a fellow nurse friend of Margie’s asked her and Joe to help themselves to all the pecans that had fallen to the ground from their tree. It took Joe 45 minutes to use the special shell-cracking mechanism for pecans, and Margie the same amount of time (they work together like a well-oiled machine) to shell and pick them. The result was a stuffed quart bag of pristine, fresh pecans that are ours and I take them out of the freezer bit by bit, toast them in the oven and use in chicken salad or on top of an ice cream sundae. You should have seen my quart bag. What a mess, but then I’d never picked pecans before. It’s always good to learn new things from the experts.
Cooking with Dee 
OK, now I’m going to have to make a comment. The pear tree is a “Orient” and has been disappointing the last few years but has certainly made more than it’s share of huge pears over the 25 years or so since we planted it. Usually I would let it drop lots of fruit in the summer for a while to thin the fruit, then start watering it. This year it dropped most of it’s fruit before the rains quit. (Yes we live in Texas too but miles and miles away from Dee and Jim.) I think that old tree is just getting too old. It does a good job of shading the west side of the house so we will keep it.
All farm folks need a Kerr or Ball canning book for guideline for canning. Oops, that was before the internet. Pear Butter is my favorite way to use the pears and I kind of made up the recipe with apple butter as a guideline but I did try cooking them in brown sugar and brandy once per Dee’s recommendation from her cooking school days and that was REALLY good. Dee, did we top them with a crust after that? Back to the pears, the Orient was crunchy like a crisp apple and only sweet late in the season, like mid-November here. It also was very grainy in texture. Not a lot different from the old Keiffers so common here from old plantings years ago. The major problem with the Orient is keeping it pruned back enough. It is a very vigorous, prolific grower. I have had some pears in the past that could have weighed well over a pound and a half. And, we never fertilized the tree, just added water during dry spells.
On another topic, when one has a small dairy, the whole family learns to stretch a dollar. I’ve lived on one much of my life and am happy now to have a herd of cows with calves by their side to do the milking. We will just harvest the calves. A cows’ diet makes a difference in the flavor of the milk. Alfalfa is always good but spring onions (actually a wild garlic) makes the cows reek. We would keep them off of those pastures as much as possible in the spring because you can’t sell smelly milk. We drank the milk ‘raw’. It was tested for all the major problems on a regular basis. Because we didn’t want to drink cream, we would stir the milk before pouring it.
Thanks, Margie, for your educational and topical comments. Did you see the post I wrote about your devoted son and dairy cows eating onions? D
Well, I’m impressed. I have this fantasy that I will someday be all domestic and learn how to can things and such… then I read about your mother-in-law who keeps a herd of goats and grows all her fruit for said canning herself. Yeah, I might as well give up now and ask for the honor of buying preserves from people like her. I’ve got a Great Aunt, one of the first women to graduate with an MD from the University of Alabama, who still picks all the pecans off her backyard pecan tree, shells them, and ships off bags to all her nephews and nieces (which, given that she had 11 siblings, is a lot bags). As she would say, “They just don’t come built like that anymore.”
Dear Neen,
Years ago before marriage I went over to Jim’s place (he couldn’t come to mine because I had a cat and he’s allergic) to make him lunch. He came in as I was washing out zip-top bags and I quickly hid them.
I fessed up and told him what I was doing. He said his mother did that all the time! I don’t know if that’s when he decided to marry me but it sure didn’t hurt! And I thought he’d laugh at me!
Just don’t re-use them if they’ve held meat or cheese. A semi-frugal cook. Oh, Joe and Margie live on a 500 acre cattle ranch….