I am in mourning, for the Baptist pears are no more.

Near our home is a church that used to have two pear trees on its grounds (foreground, left), and every year we’d pick two laundry baskets of pears and can them. Mind you, they were not the sort of pears you’d buy in a supermarket. They were hard and crunchy, and not as sweet: in a word, farm pears, suitable for canning. We’d even bought a quince sapling to graft pear branches onto, to plant in our yard.

But they cut both trees down.

Above is a picture of my Baptist Pear Strudel. We’d also make pear sauce (like applesauce, but with ginger instead of cinnamon), and pear butter.  I just made a pear-raisin crumb pie with some of last year’s haul. We bought some pear trees for the back yard, and they are on the front porch in pots, waiting for fall planting time. But it just won’t be the same.

They trees will both be Presbyterians, like us.