Last pear picking

Decided to pick all the remaining pears today, to avoid potential damage from elements, and the last persistent squirrel. Will keep the Winter Nellis in open boxes, as they will ripen gradually from now, but might wrap the Josephine de Malines and Santa Claus in paper to try to prevent too much shrivelling in store, as these can take quite a while to start ripening.

Happy New Year

A belated Happy New Year to my few followers. Another year begun badly with nearly all online and offline activity cut for months due to a bout of keratitis, I hope this is finally responding to steroids.

Lets start the New Year, with the remnants of the Old, with the last of last year's crop just about lasting. This is the first year that Josephine de Malines produced a crop and they have kept much longer in store than my other late pear Winter Nellis, most of which seemed to disintegrate when the temperature fell to -12º before Christmas. Shrivelling slightly at the top, but still quite firm. Flavour isn't top notch, a little dry and astringent but hardly surprising this late. Apples are still firm, almost crisp but I think Pixie is starting to lose flavour a little now; the Rosemary Russet is holding up better, but we will shortly run out of all of them.