Nothing like buying an old house, if - and it is a big if - the earlier inhabitants have been keen gardeners of the practical kind. That is: nearly everything they planted was for eating. A house of something like 140 years old, in a Dublin suburb, formerly farmland, had a garden which bore the obvious mark of having being occupied by sometime country folk; for nearly everything in it had been edible. Apart from the roses, that is; and, even there, some culinary genius can make use of the petals.
But the currant bushes, the gooseberries, the redcurrants, the blackcurrants, the raspberries, the strawberries and above all, perhaps, the fruit trees. A couple of good apples, plum trees, weighty with fruit but, above all, the most remarkable of pear trees. How old, it is difficult to say. It is about 40 feet high, estimates the man of the house, and just now, covered and laden down with pears ripe for eating. The remarkable thing about them, apart from their fresh flavour, is their size. They are not much bigger than your large Victoria plum, say. And yet spot-on in flavour and texture.
You ask if the heaviness of the crop has not kept them small. That is, would they now be harvesting a bigger fruit, if there had earlier been a thinning-out? Hard enough in a tree of some 40 feet. According to the master of the house there must be about 2,000 at least on the tree. Red on one side, green otherwise. Perfect for eating but obviously not going to last for long at their best.
You can, it is suggested, make perry (pear equivalent of cider?) out of them. A recipe dug out of an old handbook doesn't sound too good. It recommends a dash of isinglass! What the name of the tree is, the new owners do not know. They will find out. Maybe this species has gone the way of so many favourite apples. Out of date. No longer cultivated. Well, the new owners can always give their friends a cutting. Or is that the way to do it? Meanwhile look up all the books.
So much change in the fruit world. A relative of one of the owners believes that his parents - and we're talking of more than half a century ago - had, in their garden at one time some 30 apple trees, all different. Is it possible? Fashions change. Now it's all uniformity.