This one’s for you, Mom

When I was a child living in California, my mom and dad heard of an orange grove that was going to be cut down to make room for a new housing development.  The oranges in the grove were not going to be harvested and were available to anyone who wanted to go and pick them.

My parents came home with the back of my dad’s small pickup half full of oranges.  For the next week they juiced, juiced, and juiced oranges.  They froze much of that fresh orange juice (which I have no memory of ever drinking) but more importantly to me, they let us drink all we wanted too.

I grew up somewhere between poor and frugal.  As I child I was sure we were poor.  As an adult I am less sure how much of our life style was based on poverty and how much was based on my parent’s extreme frugality.  Either way, orange juice was an unimaginable luxury in my home and I am sure that I guzzled it like a crazy person.  (Enough that I ended up with cold sores across my lower lip with my lip swollen to 3x it’s normal size.)

For a couple of weeks now there’s been an announcement in the ward bulletin about a pear orchard in Hood River (90 minutes away) that wasn’t going to be picked this year.  Every time I saw the announcement I convinced myself that I had far too many reasons not to go, but last week I finally gave in to the lure of free produce and off we went.

It was a beautiful day in the Columbia River Gorge.

As soon as we got to the orchard we could see that most of the fruit was going to waste.  It broke my pear-loving heart!

We didn’t have a lot of time, but in 30 minutes I’ll bet we picked 100 pounds. 

We filled the three fruit boxes we’d brought, plus every bag we could find in the van.

And when we were done picking we drove home enjoying the beautiful views…

The apartment is filled with pears now.  We haven’t all eaten at the table in days. 

The first pears ripened on Sunday, proving that time and fruit waits for no man.  Or woman.  Or something like that.  Since Sunday evening I’ve canned 14 quarts and frozen lots and lots.  My next project as the pears continue to ripen is making pear-sauce, which turns out to be pretty delicious.  I’ve used most of the canning jars that didn’t get put in storage (and bought a few dozen more) so now I only have a few small canning jars to use.  I think I’ll use those and then freeze the rest of the pear sauce in quart bags.

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Sunday night as I was cleaning up I heard the first little metallic plink, the sound of a jar lid sealing.  I was excited to hear it and  remembered my mom always commenting when her jars would seal.  In that moment I missed her; wished that I could have called her and told her about my abundance of free pears and all that I was doing with them.

She would have been thrilled.