Right Now we have pears available for a very short season. Apart from our own tiny crop of pears from our new trees, we have been lucky to be able to avail this year of a crop of Conference Pears grown in North Wicklow, which we picked mid October, and which are now in our cold store.  However pears dont keep very long, and we expect that we might have them until late November if we're lucky, so hurry to the market stall while they are in abundance, because once they're gone, they're gone!

The Pear Orchard

Apart from our few garden pear trees, we have just planted our first pear orchard this spring. It is a small plot of a couple of hundred trees, and we are planting some very tasty dessert pears, such as 'Williams', 'Concorde' and 'Buerre Hardy' which I have selected both for flavour and hardiness.

However, I have also taken the bold step of selecting a special variety of cooking pear, 'Gieser Wildeman' which is delicious when poached in wine or real cider. This type of pear is well known and used in Holland, but it is something we Irish will have to be ‘introduced to’!  Here's a delicious poached pear recipe I came across.  We managed to get about 15kg 'Giesers' from our young trees this Autumn, so we have a few kilos available - if you would particularly like to get a few of these special pears, please do contact us.

We have a small crop in 2010, but we are hoping for our first proper crop of pears in Autumn 2011.