Eight slices per pear. Fourteen pears per tray. Six trays on the dehydrator. Eight batches so far. That equals 5,376 slices over the past five days. Sophie probably contributed a third of those. Fiona loves the "pear puzzling" task of placing the slices on the trays so that we can fit in the maximum number. We've also pressed some apple-pear juice which quickly dispensed with hundreds more pears. 
The freezer is filling with juice. The bags and jars are filling with dried slices.Next up, mid-season apples. After that, prune-plums. And then finally it will be late-season apples. Fall fruit is bountiful and wonderful this year. We feel so lucky.
Soon we will take delivery of 120 pounds of locally grown organic grains and lentils. Six weeks after that our bulk nut order will arrive. The new hens will start laying soon. It's harvest season.
Twenty years ago fall didn't mean harvest to me at all. It just meant cheaper fresher food in the grocery stores. My whole orientation to life, food and the natural world has changed so much over the past 20 years.
Look what I ordered the other day. Fresh-rolled oats are such a totally different food from the sawdust you buy in stores. Mmmm....
How fun! I've purchased the steel cut oats and they're delicious, so I can just imagine what fresh rolled oats are like! Enjoy!
ReplyDeleteDoes your family like dried pears better than they like other ways of preserving or eating pears? I am so envious of all your dried pears. There were some people selling dried pears in the market here in the spring, they were so delicious. I recently hauled out my dehydrator and all the trays and mesh trays are sticky, must have been put away that way, I haven't used it in a few years. I used to dry sweet peppers. I have never been very successful at drying fruit.
ReplyDeleteWe quite like dried pears, yes. They're my favourite dried fruit. And in terms of ease they're the best way for us to keep pears. Canning 50 to 80 pounds of pears would takes hours and hours and require lots of supplies and lots of space. Dried pears shrink down to a tiny fraction of their original volume and can be stored in next-to-no-space, and the only appreciable hands-on processing time is in the slicing.
ReplyDeleteGlad you ordered your new gadget!
ReplyDeleteThat is A LOT of pears :)