I've lived on my little farm for over 10 years now. When we bought the place, we had two pear trees..one was very old and worn out, and didn't last but another few years before it died, however, the big boy in the back was good, strong and a big producer of many pears. HOWEVER...it never seemed the pears got 'ripe', they always stayed HARD and I do mean hard. So for 10 years or better, I have not made use of those pears. I just figured they weren't the eating kind. This year however, I decided to do some 'studying' on pears. I learned, pears do not ripen on the tree. Nope....
You have to pick the pears, and bring them inside and let them ripen indoors for about 2 weeks.

So a few weeks ago, the pears were starting to 'fall' naturally from the tree. We grabbed a few,..(ohh bout 8 or so) and brought them inside. I've let them sit for two weeks and every few days I'd go over, turn them over and give them a firm squeeze. Wonder of all wonders, a few days ago they started 'giving' just a bit when I squeezed them.
WOW! It worked. So yesterday, I peeled, cored and cut one up and popped in my mouth. OHH MY WORD...it was so good!
So I peeled the rest, cored and cut them, put them in some water with ascorbic acid to keep them from discoloring and made a medium simple syurp. I put the pears in the jar, added a pinch of cloves and cinnamon to the top of each jar, ladled in the syrup and water bathed them for 20 minutes. They are so pretty! I only got two pints, but these were my experiment pears.

A few days ago, we collected A BUNCH (about a bushel) Of the pears, set them on the picnic table. Yesterday, we went through them, gave them a wash and brought them in. I'll be spreading them out in our guest room floor today.
This means..in a few weeks..I'll be a busy busy camper putting up pears and some pear butter! YUM!

Also got some green beans, okra and bell peppers put up in the freezer yesterday too.
So what have you canned, put up, put aside, frozen, etc lately?