It’s a homesteading blog, so you knew that come fall, a lot of the posts would be about canning. And you were right! So last week it was pears, and here they are fresh from the orchard. (We’ve already eaten the plums, or turned them into canned plummy-garlicky sauce we eat with egg rolls). Here’s the big secret Jess learned last week:

You don’t have to peel pears to can ‘em.

Did you feel the ground move under your feet? Is your worldview altered? Is it an entirely new view on life? No? Then you’ve never spent a whole day peeling pear after pear in order to can them. All you do is blanch them for 50 seconds or so, and the skins slide right off. No pears were peeled in the making of this photograph. Jess is excited about this since it cuts down on the amount of time required to can pears (they already have to process for 35 minutes per batch). She has one more box of them to can today, and then it’s on to applesauce again.

You’ll also note the eclectic nature of our pear-jar collection. We are inveterate cheapskates and we need lots of canning jars; so if people offer us jars we take ‘em. It’s canning jars; who cares what they look like, as long as they do their job? Come to think of it, that applies to a lot of things in life.

Canning’s a lot of work now, but on a cold winter’s night there’s nothing better than hot soup, biscuits slathered with butter, and cold canned pears from the root cellar.