We do have some pear trees planted in our apple orchard. By some I mean about 10 - five Bartlet pears and five potomac pears.
When you purchase the pears at the orchard they're going to be hard and green. That's because we pick them before they are ripe. You see, pears ripen from the inside out so if we were to wait for them to be soft and yellow they would be gross on the inside. The trick to knowing if a pear is ready to pick is to lift it up and if the stem breaks off cleanly from the branch it's ready.
We recommend leaving some of your pears on your counter to ripe and keep the rest in your fridge until you're ready for them. Refrigeration will slow the ripening process. If you put them all on your counter you'll have a ton of pears all ready to eat at the same time! By only putting a few on the counter at time you'll spread out their ripening process and you're enjoyment of the pears!
In past years, my mom always picked the pears for us but she passed away in January. My nephew Charlie took over her job and got the pears picked this round with grandpa. I'm sure my mom would be happy to pass the pear picking job onto him.
