The "Pearable"

Peeling pears... if it weren't for the fact that this gravity driven bomb, disguised as a fruit had landed in my sister's eye during our "shake down" of the tree, I might be more inclined to enjoy my skin shedding profession of the week... but then again maybe not. For the first season since planting our many fruit trees, the precious pear decided to bless us with an over abundance of it's glorious beauties, some reaching the size of softballs, (like the one that gave Leah a swollen eye). The single most important thing you need to know about pears is they take time to soften and sweeten- however they do this after they have been picked. We let ours set for about a week and sat down with our bushels in the living room, many bowls of lemon water, compost buckets and peeled. It may sound rather "apeeling" (yeah I couldn't help myself there) but it's a tedious job especially if you didn't get out there in early spring to spray the tree with borax (as our Indian friend, Brother John informed us during our visit to WV a couple of weeks ago). You see, a store bought pear is a beautiful thing, it's smooth and virtually blemish free. These pears have been protected from the hazards of the "bite" of  pestilence... i.e. bug. Come next spring, we'll be out there with the borax to spray our trees, but this year we are dealing with what we have, thankful to have a bountiful harvest of anything.

An interesting fact about pears is that if one is bit by a bug, it usually doesn't rot in that spot like you might think, but rather, forms a hard almost callous in that spot and continues growing. This callous can sometimes go as deep as the core and you have to remove it before they are canned. This makes for a lot of bumps in the road while peeling and slows the process drastically. But on we trod, all hands on deck, with Matt, mom, and Leah all joining in on the fun. Once they are peeled, they also have to be cored, then canned. We're doing several different things with them including spiced pears and fermented pear salsa. The latter got Matt a little excited, I heard him say, "you mean I can eat chips and salsa and get the 'good for my gut' food in me?" Yes Matt, you can have your cake and eat it to. We have all noticed a vast improvement in our health and digestive systems since starting to ferment some of our garden foods, only... Matt isn't a huge pickle fan (which are the easiest to ferment) and the last batch of fermenting we prepared was peppers. Poor Matt also has a difficult time with spicy things but is trying for the sake of his gut and being thankful for the things that come from the garden. Thus the several evenings of pears commenced.

 Allow me a moment if I take the time to point out the symbolism I found in the pear process... I like to think of myself as one of these pears- going along in life, trying to grow, to become a big, beautiful, soft, sweet pear. Only, I'm not protected, some how the gardener either didn't know how or failed in his job to protect me from those bugs. Like the world does, they bit me. But the tree I was connected to (my mom, sister and the Lord) was strong, so I still grew, but I had to callous over those bites and move on, keep growing. Once I was ready to be harvested, the Lord, having fired the gardener that was supposed to protect me against these dangers before they came, stepped in as the Master gardener and pulled me from the tree where I rested (this happened to me out in Oklahoma where I lived for 4 years). Not only did I rest while there, I was ripening, the sugars where building; I was sweetening, softening. Then came time for the peeling, this was hard work and sometimes painful because God had to go in and take out all of those calloused spots where I had healed over the pain in order to remove them. All the while I was placed in the sweet lemon water to keep from going bad before I was ready for the next steps in life, to transform and move on to something far greater. You see, God can take that pear with all of those holes, still dice it up and make a beautiful jar of spiced pears out of it!

Before concluding, I'd like to point out something I said earlier- this coming the spring, I'm going to do my best to see to it that those bugs never take a bite out of my baby pears. Dear friends- that is how our Heavenly Father is. So many times we look at our lives and we say, "if that bad thing hadn't happened to me, I wouldn't have learned that lesson, or become this or that." etc.. But no! Yes, God can make something beautiful out of anything, he's the Master Carpenter! But His perfect will is that those "bites", those bad things, never happen in the first place. He is a good, loving Father; He only wants the best for His children and we must see to it that we do the same for our own children, to protect them from the "bites" of the world, so that they may grow up to be healthy, beautiful whole... just as God intended them to be.

Until next time, remember, Jesus is that beautiful Light that expels all darkness...

Love for you all,

~Michelle