Tag Archives: Nashi pears

A Successful Experiment

Leave a comment

I have been occupied with some non-blogworthy business so not a lot to share at the moment.

However, the dehydrator has been working overtime as I dried a couple of lots of sliced nashi pears. This has been a raging success and I will definitely be some more over the next few days. The pile of fruit spread on the dining table is gradually reducing.

This is what they look like.

More importantly they taste absolutely delicious.

We went out to lunch with friends today and had our main meal so didn’t need too much for dinner. I did not take a photo but we had a small platter of crackers, dip, camembert cheese and the dried pears which was very tasty indeed.

Netted Nashi

Leave a comment

I showed you a few months ago in this post that we had netted the entirety of our three espaliered fruit trees – one nectarine and two nashi pears. That decision proved to be really successfully with us not losing any fruit to the birds and other wildlife.

We have removed it gradually as the fruit ripened on each tree. First, were the nectarines, then one nashi and a couple of days ago we removed the netting completely and picked the nashi pears from the last tree.

There were well over 100 fruit.

GMan had stewed and frozen all of the fruit from the first tree and did about another 40 of these. I am now experimenting with dehydrating slices of them for snacks and have given some to the Community Pantry.

The next job was to fold the netting up and put it away for next season. We spread it out so that we could remover any leaves or debris and it noticed a jagged hole of about 8cm across in the middle of the netting. I am not sure whether it was caused by an errant branch growing through or a possum munching through it.

Anyway, I decided to mend the hole before packing the netting up. It is nothing fancy but will work well.

A few days ago I saw an ad on Facebook for a hands-on workshop on ‘Summer Fruit Tree Pruning’ in a town about 45 minutes from us. This seemed like a perfect opportunity so GMan has signed up and is going along on Friday. Hopefully, he will be able to apply his new-found knowledge to our trees.

A Hot Day

Leave a comment

We have had a remarkably mild summer so far but yesterday it really kicked into gear. The outdoor temperature at our place peaked at 40.5C. This is not remarkable compared to other parts of the country but it was certainly enough to make us choose to stay indoors. With the blinds drawn and a couple of ceiling fans we were quite comfortable for most of the day before turning the airconditioning on in the family room for 2 hours in the late afternoon from about 5.30pm. The temperature was set on 24C and this soon made the room pleasantly comfortable.

I spent most of the day sewing and made two bags for a friend from fabric she had given me. They were mostly relatively small pieces of linen and cotton which had been carry bags from bed linen she had purchased at various times. I am really pleased with the results and looking forward to giving them to her.

Meanwhile, GMan was hardly being lazy either. He had picked 45 Nashi pears from one of our trees the previous day. This was after the birds had helped themselves. If we get organised and net the trees next year our harvest should be about doubled. Neither of us were smitten with eating the fruit raw so he decided to try stewing them. This was a raging success as they taste just like the tinned pears we both remember eating when we were growing up. It was a huge job to peel, core and slice them all but we now have one container in the refrigerator and several others in the freezer.

Today is a day of extreme to catastrophic fire danger across most of the state so we will be indoors, staying cool and most importantly, following any emergency reports and advice.