Pears With Everything

We have a number of pear trees dotted around the place, but this year only one tree, a conference pear, has cropped heavy. 

But then there are enough pears on there to be more than we can eat fresh. So I've been cooking them in any way I can think of. 

We've had pear and apple crumble (which is amazing) and a new one was to have the pears drizzled with honey and balsamic vinegar then roasted. These were incredibly sweet and tasty and one I'll be doing again- it even earnt a "bake-off" style handshake from my middlest child. 

What's your favourite way to have pears?

Another Birthday - Children Are Now 3, 6 & 7!

I honestly can't believe that our children are now three, six and seven! It's gone so fast but it's been amazing!

A bridesmaid dress she got form the jumble sale that she wore the whole day. 

This one turned six this week. She an incredible young lady, full of fun, , humour, intelligence, mischief and fiestiness, and she certainly knows how to keep us on our toes!

Fruit Tree Nursery 2014

Last weekend I finally managed to finish grafting and planting all of my fruit trees.

 I planted them in two separate beds quite close together to try to encourage them to grow straight and true. I 've also experimented a little bit as one lot was planted through some old weed suppressant matting I had left from ages ago and the other will be mulched with straw

In these two little beds is hopefully my future cider orchard, some apricots and nectarines to see if I can get them to grow in our cold spot, cherries so we can have delicious stone fruit in the summer, plums and pears to grow around the veg garden and some more apple trees to grow and sell.

140 in total this year, should be interesting to see how they do.

Did anyone else get round to doing any grafting this year?

Pears in syrup

This is just an experiment from something I read on the Internet (I say that far too often) so don't try this until I find out if it works or not. 

On Tuesday I preserved some of our "less nice" eating pears from a tree that I planted at my parents farm some years ago. I did this in a sugar syrup and it was relatively easy, but so much so I'm not sure if it will preserve them or not.

Picked the pears

 

Help picking

Peeled, quartered them and removed the core

Boiled them in a sugar syrup made up of 2 cups sugar to one water (American measure but it was an easy way).

Once they were poached I put them in some hot kilner jars (out of the oven) and then rested them upside down to check they were sealed and to sterilise the tops

Trying the goods - they tasted pretty good!

Bottled up ready to go in the cupboard - I hope they last as I made up three jars!

So that was simple but quite time consuming. I know it's not "proper" bottling but I think they should last and the website I found it on (which I can't seem to find now!) said they should last for six months like this.

Orchard Plans

Well it's raining again tonight and I've no plans to go and face it as I've been outside most of the day.

So instead I'll start planning what I'm going to do next. One of the first things I've done on the homestead was to start to plant our orchard. I wasn't going to bother this year, what with moving on the 23rd of December, having a baby daughter and keeping enough work coming in  we were quite busy, but I remembered that my plan was if I ever bought a smallholding then the first thing I'd do was to plant fruit trees!

They don't look much yet!

And plant them I did. I managed to get 22 in before the spring, I think I went a little bit mad. I brought quite few "common" ones from Aldi (as they were British grown and only £5 a tree) and then more unusual ones from Frank P Matthews (who are local to my parents and offer a huge range and top quality trees). I even bough some two year old trees to speed them along a bit. Many of these trees I planted in the rain at night, the neighbours must have thought I was burying a body!

I've tried to get a wide selection of fruit, apples are the most important to me as i eat so many (about 3 a day) and I've tried to get some with good keeping qualities as well as all my favorites.

The plan of the types of trees (excuse my writting!)

So far I've planted:

Apple - (2) Cox, (2) Braeburn, Bramley, (2) Scotch Bridget, Elstar, Worcester Pearman, (2) Brownlees Russet, Christmas Pippin, Discovery

Pear - Duce Du Comice, (2) Conference 

Plum - Victoria, Czar, Opal,

One Quince,

One Medlar,

One Green Gage

I've got enough room for another 8 trees easily in this area, maybe more, and I know I want to plant some damsons (damson jam is my favourite) but not sure what else. Maybe some cider apple trees, a few more plums and a crab apple but open to suggestions! I've still got to fence it off and add a gate so when I get some grazing stock they can be kept away from the leaves and fruit of the trees.

All the trees look really healthy (and I've not needed to water them!)

My other plan for the orchard is to look at getting some meat chickens (day olds) in the next couple of months as I'd like to start producing some free range chickens for us to eat. I'd have to build a movable coop and use mesh fencing so I can give them a large area of fresh grass but stop them from wondering off and give them some protection from predators. It should be a good use of the space as the trees establish.