A-pear-ances can be deceiving

It's trying hard to be fall out there, it really is. It's just that the weather is not cooperating. The days are growing shorter. I have to do the morning chores in the dark now before I go to work. There is a different feel to the air. But it's still hitting 90 about every day, it's still humid, and (thankfully) it's raining fairly often now. Fall has been temporarily postponed until a date to be announced.

Warm weather or not life goes on. Arboreal thieves made off with my pears this year, but my brother's wife gifted me with three bags of sand pears that a friend had given her. They were dead ripe and going soft so I elected to make pear butter. I quartered the fruit then cooked them soft Friday night. Saturday before heading out to the Kinder Major's soccer game I ran them through the Victorio strainer to remove the seeds, skins, and grit cells and this morning I started cooking them down.

There was about a pint shy of two gallons of juice and pulp when I started and when I finished there was fourteen half-pints (3.5 quarts) of what tastes like the best pear butter I've made to date. I believe between the muscadine grape, strawberry, and peachs jams and this pear butter we're set for the year for biscuit and toast spread and some for Christmas gifts to boot.

If I'm lucky I'll receive another bag or three of pears this coming weekend too that I'll turn into plain old sauce. We're nearly out of the last batch.

The old hen flock have finally decided to get around to molting. They've been needing to for two months. Feathers all over the place as their new suits grow in. Hopefully egg production will back up again as well. The new flock are pretty well into their first laying cycle. Still about half of them laying pullet eggs but they're getting bigger by the day.

Didn't get the hen house cleaned out today like I wanted. Just as I was finishing up with the pear butter I looked out to see that it was raining so I started making the bread for the week. Naturally once I was committed the rain stopped, but that's Florida weather for you.

Fall and Winter will surely come one day and I'm growing more impatient by the day...

.....Alan.