Picking Pears

by Ellen Kok

Pear Harvest Day at the orchard of Dutch market garden Proeftuin van Linschoten. People are invited to pick their own pears. Bottles of pear juice are sold.

Proeftuin van (Taste Garden of) Linschoten is a new ecological market garden in the village of Linschoten in the Netherlands. It is run by four women: initiator Natascha Boel and gardeners Matty Vink, Emma Smeets and Nina Linders, with the help of many community volunteers. Together they have transformed an old, four acre pear orchard into a nature-inclusive vegetable, herbs and fruit garden. The project is in its second year and is subsidized by the European Fund for Rural Development and the Dutch province of Utrecht. I have been following its development for terrafoto since August 2022.

During September 2023 people are not only invited to visit the garden and harvest their own vegetables, as is custom here for vegetable shareholders as well as passers-by. They are also encouraged to pick their own pears in the section of the old pear orchard that has not been cleared of fruit trees.

Many inhabitants of the surrounding towns and villages take the opportunity. They can fill their own (bicycle) bags or borrow one of the buckets that are provided. 1 kilogram of pears costs one euro (slightly more than one dollar). One bucket holds around 6 kilos of the fruit, two buckets full are sold for €10. Of course there are always those who are very adept at heaping the pears above the bucket's rim.

For many visitors it’s their first time ever in an orchard and they are a bit unsure about the whole experience. How do you know if a pear is ripe enough to be plucked? For that, the gardeners give a simple instruction: don’t pull it, but lift it up, if it’s ripe, it’s stem will easily break free from the branch it’s hanging on.

The youngest pear plucker, Siem, needed a little help from his father to reach the most ripe and juiciest pears, which he then harvested without any sign of vertigo and with shrieks of joy.