Off-Grid in West Virginia

TUESDAY

Linda

Carol called me Sunday morning and asked if I wanted any pears.  I gave her an emphatic affirmative. Are you kidding?  Pears!  In this neck of the woods you don’t pass up anything that can be put up in your pantry. Ronald and Vicki had picked pears at a friends farm and had a load of them. She worked up (canned) all that she needed and asked if Carol and I wanted what was left.  So Carol and I rode over to Vickie’s to pick them up. She had two or more five gallon buckets filled to the brim with golden pears. They were ripening up pretty fast since they were picked the week before.

Watch those fingers

Vickie also had two large Cushaw pumpkins for me. She said she had enough canned to last them for two years and didn’t care if she saw any more pumpkins until then.  I was glad to take them off her hands and appreciate being able to put more pumpkin in our root cellar.

Carol and I decided to work up our pears yesterday and Vickie said she would be glad to help. With that many pears to peel and cut up an extra pair of hands are always welcome. We didn’t get started on them until afternoon because I had to take the forty pound propane tank for the generator to be exchanged in town. Of course a trip to town takes all morning, but I hurried as fast as I could.

Cooking them down

We girls had a great time while we peeled and cut. Vicki kept us entertained with conversation.  John went to visit his friend Gary who lives down the road a piece.  I guess he wanted to get away from the cackling hens. Carol has a nice area in her basement with everything needed to do canning. It helps to have an extra stove and all the large pots.  We worked at my grandmother’s old aqua colored Formica table from the early 1950’s.  I have many fond memories of sitting at that old kitchen table with my grandparents.

Future Pear Sauce

We decided to make pear sauce (which is like apple sauce) because the pears were so ripe. We had three pots of pears cooking down on the stove. I think we added a bit more water than needed and it took longer than expected to boil them down. We actually strained out some of the liquid to save time.  The sauce was pretty tart so we added some sugar to sweeten it. We put up about sixteen pints of sauce and Carol made pear butter (something like apple butter) from the liquid we strained off.

Nothing from the pears was wasted. The chickens enjoyed a pan of scraps and the rest went into the compost.  When I open a jar of pear sauce, I’ll have warm memories of time spent with good friends.  As I open the lid the sound of tinkling voices, laughter and the sight of smiling faces as our hands busily worked will come to mind. That’s something you can’t get from a factory packed tin can.

Pear sauce and Pear Butter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 at 8:17 pm and is filed under Canning, Farming, Gardening, Harvesting, Off-Grid, Self-Sufficiency. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.