Fruit Trees Spring 2013

Well, it has been a weird spring as far as the weather.  We had frosty cold nights (down to -5°F) a few times and a week of +30°F weather.  The last week, we had lots of rain - enough to half-fill the small wheelbarrow.

I went out to check on how the fruit is coming and found both good and bad news.

Next to no peaches.  Last year we had so many that I had to thin them out.  The late frost happened when the trees were blooming so no peaches.  :(

 

The apricot tree in the back is loaded - even with Barry's severe pruning this year.  He cut the tree back quite a bit to shorten it so we don't have to climb so high on the ladder to pick the fruit.

 

We are going to have lots of plums.  They seem to be very hardy as we have had an abundance of plums each year.

 

Look at the poor cherries!  :(  They are so scarce, we didn't even bag the trees against the cherry fruit fly this year.  it was too much work for so few cherries.  The frost hit the cherry blossoms as well as the peaches this year.  :(

 

It looks like the apple crop will be good.  I will be soon thinning out the apples so the fruit gets bigger.  I'd rather have fewer but larger fruit than lots of small apples.

 

The pears are plentiful and will need thinning as well.

 

Here is the second apricot tree which is loaded like the other tree.  It'll be the year for apricot juice and jam.

 



Streusel Pear Loaf

This is another recipe I tried to use up some extra pears.  I found it at this link: http://southernfood.about.com/od/pears/r/bl51029b.htm

Ingredients

1 1/2 to 2 c chopped pears

1 tsp lemon juice 

2 c flour

3/4 c sugar

2 tsps baking powder

2 eggs

1/2 c milk

1 1/2 tsps vanilla

1/4 c butter or marg, melted

for the streusel

1 c flour

1/2 c brown sugar

1/4 c butter or marg, cold

2 tsps cinnamon

1/3 c chopped pecans

Grease and flour a 9x5x3-inch loaf pan. Preheat oven to 350°.

Peel and core pears.  Place in water with a bit of lemon juice to keep from turning brown.

Chop pears - I find the food processor works great.

Mix with lemon juice and set aside.

Combine all streusel ingredients except nuts until crumbly. Then mix in pecans.

Beat eggs in a bowl then stir in milk, vanilla and melted butter.  Add dry ingredients and stir until just moistened.

Place half the batter into the loaf pan.

Add half of the chopped pears.

Sprinkle on half of the streusel mixture.

Spread on the remaining batter.

Now add half of the remaining streusel.

Cover with the remaining pears.

Finish up with the rest of the streusel mix.

Bake for 1 hour 10 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes or until toothpick comes clean.

Cool in pan for 10 minutes then let cool completely streusel side up.

I found the loaf to be moist and tasty.  I made extra and froze several loaves but I wouldn't freeze it again though because the streusel gets soggy from the moisture of the pears. 

I do like the streusel on top and again in the centre of the loaf.  Enjoy.  ;)]

Pear Cake

We had an over-abundance of pears last fall, and while they did keep, I can only eat so many.  So I hunted up some recipes on the internet.  I found a Pear Cake here  http://southernfood.about.com/od/pears/r/bl50221b.htm  that looked interesting.

Ingredients

4 c chopped pears

3 c flour

1 c chopped walnuts or pecans

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1 c oil

2 eggs, beaten

2 c sugar

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla

Grease and flour either a 9" x 13" pan or tube pan.  I used the 9x13 pan.

Peel and core pears.  I kept them in water with a bit of lemon juice to prevent them from browning.

Chop pears to measure 4 cups.   I chopped them in my food processor.

 Mix pears with sugar and nuts and let sit for 1 hour.  



Stir frequently. 

Add dry ingredients to the pears; stir to combine.  



Add oil, vanilla, and beaten eggs.

Stir to blend.

Pour batter into a generously greased and floured pan.

Bake at 350° for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 minutes for the tube pan or 45 to 55 minutes for the 9x13 pan.  Test with a toothpick in the center to be sure.

The cake was very moist.  We ate it without icing but it probably would taste great with cream cheese icing (although I think, anything would taste great with cream cheese icing).

Pears don't have a strong taste but it had what I am calling a "fresh" taste.  Enjoy!  ;)

Pear Juice and Pear Butter

We had a huge crop of pears this year so I decided to try some Pear Butter.  When you make fruit butter you need to cook the fruit for a long time to reduce the juice so the fruit is thick and spreadable.  I decided to make juice first and then use the pulp for the butter. 

I started with a couple of recipes and made my own.  Here are a couple of the links that started me off:  http://bad-girls-kitchen.blogspot.com/2008/09/pear-butter.html   http://frugalliving.about.com/od/recipes/r/Pear_Butter.htm   http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/pear-butter/detail.aspx

Ingredients
2 ½ quarts pear pulp (from juicer – cored not peeled)

½ c orange juice

2 c sugar

2 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp cloves

Pick pears that are mostly ripe.  I had two sinkfuls of pears to use.

Wash and core.  Remove blemishes or bad spots there is but no need to peel. 

I do not need to core the pears to juice them but since I was going to use the pulp I did core them.  Juice the pears and pour into a large pot.  Heat to boiling point then simmer 5 to 10 minutes. 

Fill sterilized jars and process for 10 minutes in hot water bath. 

I ended up with 7 quarts of juice.  It is quite thick - more like a nectar instead of juice but it is quite tasty. 

Now onto the butter.  I placed the pear pulp into the crock pot along with 2 cups of left over pear juice.  I decided to add the juice because the pulp was fairly dry.   

 I cooked the pears on low for about five hours with the lid on, stirring occasionally.  Some fruit butter recipes have you keep the lid ajar so moisture escapes but it wasn't needed in my case.

I then ran the pears through my sieve to remove the peels.  In one of the links, they used an immersion blender to blend the pulp and peels.  I do not have one so did it my way.  I also found the peels were still tough - if you don't juice the pears first you need to cook much longer to reduce the liquid so the peels will have more time to soften. 

Since I did it this way, I probably did not have to core the pears first.  Oh well, one step less for next time.  There was not much waste left for the compost pile. 

I then measured the pulp so I would know how much sugar, etc. to add.  I had around 10 cups of pulp. 

The pulp was returned to the crock pot and orange juice was added. 

Sugar and spices were also added.  I used cinnamon and cloves because my mom used to can pears with cloves when I was young and I liked the taste.  You can use ginger or nutmeg instead if you prefer. 

Stir together and cook on low for 3 to 4 hours for the flavours to blend. 

Stir occasionally until smooth and heated through. 

Fill sterilized jars and process for 10 minutes in a hot water bath. 

I got 6 1/2 pints of pear butter. 

Fruit Trees in Bloom

Here's what's blooming in our yard right now.  The apples blossoms are opening.  The buds are dark pink but when the blossoms open they are so pale, they are almost white.



We have a number of varieties of apple - some early and some late but they all seem to bloom at the same time.

On sunny days, (which we have had few of this spring) the bees are buzzing in and amongst the blossoms.

Here we can see one busy bee making the rounds.

The saskatoon bushes are full of blooms as well.  We were given the bushes last year and they had a few blossoms but did not amount to much.

If you are from Saskatchewan, as I am, one of your favorite pies is saskatoon berry pie.



The blossoms are quite a bit smaller and scragglier than the fruit trees but I'm looking forward to harvesting them if I can get them before the birds do.

Here we can see the apricots forming where just recently there were masses of flowers.

The pear tree has never been so full of flowers since we moved here.  I guess the pruning is paying off.

You can see that the pear blooms are white and the petals are longer and farther apart than the apple blossoms.

If even half of the blossoms set fruit, we will have to thin the fruit dramatically.

Personally, I think that peach blossoms are the prettiest.  They have already finished blooming and will hopefully set fruit.  They are the touchiest trees we have.  The first year here, there was a late frost and it damaged the peach blossoms so no one in the area had any peaches.

We have several peach trees and the blooms are all different shades of pink.

This is my favorite tree as the blossoms look so rich.  Our peach trees are not all doing well.  One of them split last year from poor pruning and high winds.  With others we have had to prune away dead branches.

This tree has much paler pink blossoms than the above trees. 

Here are two peach trees with quite different shades of blossoms.  You can see that the first tree has been pruned severely because of dead and broken branches.  Hopefully it will survive.