As a small boy growing up in England little did I know that the Bartlett Pears which were on every super market shelf probably came from the Rogue valley of Southern Oregon.

The Bartlett pear was developed in the 17th century by John Stair in England. Mr. Stair sold some of his pear cuttings to a horticulturist named Williams, who continued developing the Stair variety and renamed it Williams. After the Williams pear's seedlings crossed the Atlantic, a nurseryperson named Enoch Bartlett of Massachusetts renamed this traveling fruit Bartlett, which is the name it continues to be known as today.

Pears are still big business here in the Rogue valley and every year the locals celebrate the arrival of the pear blossom with a festival. Thats been going on for over 50 years

It all started back in 1954 when representatives of the Fruit Growers' League, Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants Association met to initiate an event during the spring blossom season. In that first years parade there were just ten floats.

By 1956 there were 100 floats and the festival included a 30-mile tour of the Rogue valley's pear orchards. Pear Blossom Festival parade marshals have included many celebrities including in 1960 John F. Kennedy.

This year will be the 54th parade and there are over 150 entrants with over 5,000 participants.



There aren't any alpacas scheduled to be in this years parade, but maybe that is something I can remedy in next years parade....sounds like some serious alpaca halter training could be on the cards.

We are expecting rain on the farm tomorrow but today has been very pleasant at 68 degrees, with no wind to speak of.

Time to start getting prepared for alpaca shearing in two weeks time. So we need to get all the fleece bags labelled and organise volunteers to help sort and weigh the fleece as we take it off.

I will be bringing in alpacas from other farms nearby so that also needs to be organised in such a way that we don't need to quarantine the alpacas.

We will be taking samples from all the alpacas in order to submit the results onto the IAC database to be used to compile the EPD's (estimated progeny differences ) for the reference sires that we in the Ideal Alpaca Community (IAC) use.

Adrian Stewart - click here to go to Mulberry Alpacas