putting up pears

So...remember those pears that I was telling you about? Well, Michael and I went back and picked another 20 lbs or so. That makes for approximately 30 lbs of pears that we picked from our neighbor's tree. We've been letting them ripen in our basement because as I understand it, pears do not ripen well on the tree (or at least not in a timely manner).

Here are the pears in the basement after putting up 14 pints:

Preparing pears for canning takes a lot of work. Michael and I sat outside with 1/3 of our harvest and peeled, cored, and halved the pears. Given that the pears were not treated with any pesticides, some of them had larvae living in them so we had a lot of cleaning to do with them. Once the pears were prepped for canning, we made a light syrup out of sugar, honey, and water. I made a double batch of the syrup ('cause we got a ton o' pears) with 12 cups of water, 2 cups of honey, and 2 cups of sugar. From there we cooked the pears for five minutes in the syrup and then packed our clean, sterilized jars with the pears. You can then fill up to the fill line with the syrup, slap a lid and screw top on, and toss 'em in the canner for 20 minutes (25 for quarts).

A little of our finished product:

Yummy! Keep putting up your goods--winter is around the corner!