California Pears

Cal­i­for­nia pear farm­ing areas are arguably in some of the most desir­able and beau­ti­ful places in the state.

The beauty of his­toric pear orchards con­tributes sig­nif­i­cantly to the appeal of com­mu­ni­ties such as Court­land and Clarks­burg, located in the Sacra­mento River Delta grow­ing region.

Lake­port and Kelseyville rep­re­sent the Lake County pear grow­ing dis­trict. Ukiah, in the Men­do­cino grow­ing dis­trict, rounds out the real estate.

Together these grow­ing areas pro­duce approx­i­mately 150,000tons of pears each year. The vol­ume of pears pro­duced in Cal­i­for­nia has declined in recent years, as has the num­ber of pear farm­ers.

Even so, the Cal­i­for­nia pear indus­try remains a lead­ing sup­plier of pears to the world.

Today's Cal­i­for­nia pear farmer is very likely to be part of a farm­ing fam­ily who has been grow­ing pears for gen­er­a­tions. There are about 60pears farm­ers who grow pears in Cal­i­for­nia. Many are still farm­ing on the same land their fore­fa­thers planted decades ago.

For­tu­nately, pear trees have a long, pro­duc­tive life. The aver­age age of a Cal­i­for­nia pear orchard is between 30and 100years. The aver­age size of a Cal­i­for­nia pear farm is 130acres.

The Cal­i­for­nia pear indus­try is a close knit com­mu­nity. The sus­tain­able prac­tices employed by Cal­i­for­nia pear farm­ers make them excel­lent neigh­bors in the small, rural com­mu­ni­ties where pears are grown.

Fresh pears are all har­vested and packed by hand. This requires a sig­nif­i­cant amount of labor, par­tic­u­larly dur­ing har­vest.

As with all of Cal­i­for­nia agri­cul­ture, farm work­ers are an impor­tant and val­ued resource. Pear farm­ers are com­mit­ted to healthy rela­tion­ships with the other busi­nesses and res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ties where they live and work. They strive to pro­tect the qual­ity of life and sup­port the local economies.

Sev­eral vari­etal pears are grown in the Golden state. From Comice and Bosc, to Seckel and Forelle, there is a pear for every taste. Bartlett pears may still be the most desir­able.

By 1849, Bartlett pear trees had arrived in Cal­i­for­nia, brought West by prospec­tors eager to strike it rich in the Gold Rush. Those who planted and farmed pears found their true for­tunes in this golden fruit.

Cal­i­for­nia grew to be the nation's sup­plier of pears as the first large-​scale com­mer­cial fruit indus­try emerged. Many of the farm­ing fam­i­lies who orig­i­nally planted pears near Sacramento's Gold Rush com­mu­ni­ties are still grow­ing pears today.