Pears, Anyone??

A couple of weeks ago, we got down to business and processed our numerous pears that came off the tree in our wonderful new back yard. Have I said how much I love our home? The yard has been a work in progress.

It went from this:

To this:

I've been cutting up the wood the previous owners left in piles around the yard, as well as moving wood to the shed. Phew!

There was quite a bit of salvageable wood as well, which we used to build the chicken coop (pictures of that process will be coming tomorrow). I've even still got a pile of wood we can use for future projects.

I even stained/painted the deck last week to get it ready for the winter rains:

But, about those pears....

My hubby and mom even got in on the fun of this all-day project for part of it. I peeled, cored, and sliced pears for hours.

 Packed them into sterilized quart jars with hot apple juice that I prepared on the stove.

 

And processed them in the water-bath canner for 25 minutes.

 The result? 13 lovely quarts of pears!

I didn't quite get all the pears canned in one day, so I decided to take my friend Meg's suggestion and dehydrated some. But these aren't just sliced and dried. They are dredged through red-hots. At Meg's instruction, I melted a package of the cinnamon candy on the stove with some water, stirring to keep it from burning.

Once it was a nice syrup, I stirred a few pears at a time into the syrup:

 Then placed them in the dehydrator, where they still are (and smelling quite tasty, I might add):

 I think they'll take about 24 hours, but I just might have sneaked one off the bottom rack this morning and it tasted wonderful already. What a treat! Thanks, Meg!