Harvest of the Month
September
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Pears
Let's learn all about Pears
- Color: Pears come in many different colors, such as green, yellow, brown, and red. Just like picking out your favorite crayons, you can choose pears in different colors to enjoy different flavors.
- Shape: Pears are shaped a bit like a curvy, gentle lightbulb. This unique shape helps pears grow on tree branches without falling off. It also makes them easy to hold and eat when they're ripe and juicy!
- Flavor: Each pear has a unique flavor, from the buttery-sweet Bartlett to the tart Bosc and the sweet little Seckel. The skin and the flesh taste slightly different so be sure to eat them both.
- Ripening: Pears are picked hard and need to ripen to get to their maximum sweetness. Most varieties taste best when they give to a gentle squeeze around the stem. Leave them on the counter (out of direct sunlight) for a couple days.
- Harvest: California pears are harvested from late July through September. The main growing areas are the counties along the upper Sacramento valley and river delta and Mendocino, Lake and El Dorado counties.
Ripening is key to enjoying pears.
Featured Pear Grower:
Scully Packing Company
Finley, CA
Scully family
Let's Meet The Scully Family From Scully Packing Company
In 1984, Scully Packing Company was founded to manage pear production for a collective of family farmers from California's primary pear-producing areas. Scully offers pears from all of California's growing regions. Their Sacramento Delta orchards provide customers with quality fresh pears at the beginning of the season. Our Mountain Pear districts of Mendocino and Lake counties produce pears with exceptional quality and flavor. Our policy of using separate labels to identify the district of origin of each Bartlett Pear pack avoids confusion as to the origin of the fruit.
Scully Packing Company is located in Lake County, close Clear Lake, at an elevation of about 1300 feet.
The Scully Family offers a variety of pears
Sweet, juicy, and very flavorful, the Bartlett is America’s most popular variety. It ripens at room temperature, turning from bright green to mild yellow, and yielding to gentle pressure. The Bartlett is perfect for fruit salads or slicing into lettuce salads with crumbled blue cheese, and also excellent for canning and cooking.
A popular dessert pear, the Bosc pear is highly aromatic, with dense, sweet-spicy flesh that is ideal for baking, poaching, and cooking. When ripening, the brown skin of the Bosc pear does not change color; instead, the stem end shrivels when fully ripe.
Small in size but big on sweetness, the Seckel pear does not change color when ripening – it simply becomes soft around the stem when ripe. It’s an excellent choice for children’s snacks, as a dessert when paired with cheese, or baked into tartlets or cookies.
The beautiful Red Pear has the same flavor and texture as the Bartlett, but its unique color adds a gourmet touch to salads, desserts and cooking. As its name implies, when the Red Pear is fully ripe, it displays a bright red skin.
The French Butter is a good autumn pear, popular for desserts, with a sweet and buttery flavor and a smooth texture that is aromatic. It is a specialty pear and therefore not always easy to find, but definitely enjoyed once it is.
Let's Enjoy Pears
Looking for easy recipes that include fresh pears? This video shows three quick, nutritious, and easy-to-prepare options. Enjoy!
Contact Us
For more info on The FruitGuys Farm-to-School Program, contact Carol Stewart at [email protected]
For general info, School Bulletin suggestions, or questions about your Nutrition Education materials, contact The School Team at [email protected]
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