What does a black-skinned pear look like? Step into Pear Sharing Paradise and see

Located in the Xizhou area of Changhua, "Pear Sharing Paradise" is not a professional pear orchard, but perhaps that is exactly its strength.

Precisely because we are not professional, the orchard, besides growing 4029 Mixue pears and Taichung No. 2 Jingyuan pears, has also kept the "rough pear" Hengshan pear, long since eliminated by the commercial market. In fact, quite a few people enjoy its sweet-and-sour, crisp and juicy texture, yet they can never find it anywhere.

Precisely because we are not professional and do not need to worry about convenience and efficiency, we can accept that all kinds of lush plants grow beneath the pear trees, including cash crops and various fast-growing weeds. The greenery that rapidly flourishes in the orchard happens to replenish the organic matter and various nutrients that pear orchards rather lack, and allows the orchard to maintain a natural ecological balance as much as possible.

Also because we are not professional, we cannot produce the beautiful-looking, large and plump "gift-box pears," so we can try using white, non-light-blocking non-woven fabric for bagging. Under the sun, the color may not turn out well, but direct photosynthesis can increase the accumulation of carbohydrates in the fruit and boost the content of sugars and other nutrients. (See "Questions and Answers on Supporting Techniques for Bagged Pear Cultivation," 10.) Moreover, non-woven fabric bags are less prone to tearing and can be reused, making them environmentally friendly.

Since I, the orchard hand, took over the management work, I have found many bird nests in the trees one after another, having seen eggs as steady as Mount Tai, and also seen fledglings that open their beaks wide and chirp noisily for insects the moment they hear a sound. Traces of frogs, lizards, cicadas, insects, snakes and other creatures are also seen from time to time; their presence has long become an indispensable part of "Pear Sharing Paradise." Thank goodness we are not professional. From the very beginning, we neither need nor are able to compete with the experts, so we can let nature take its course and try not spraying pesticides, treating the land and its inhabitants kindly.

How nutritious and how delicious can the fruit produced by "Pear Sharing Paradise" be? Still in the experimental stage, we really dare not boast. What can perhaps be certain is that this June we will produce a fruit as rare as the Taiwan black bear and worth savoring again and again, which we might as well call the "black-skinned (happy) pear."