Or ask your neighbor if you could harvest some! I'll bet she'd be tickled, honestly. She probably thinks of it as a bother- because i guarantee she has hornets on hers, too. My keifer is buzzing with hornets, yellow jackets, red spotted purples & others. I don't mind so much since it was labeled as a seckle pear. Boy, did i get gypped! For now, i'm leaving it- we do eat some of them, but they sure aren't seckles. And whatever stole my other fruit hasn't bothered with them. Figures.

My pear tree is an ancient one and it gets covered every year and I will be letting most of them feed the wildlife because they have very little flavor. They are crunchy and surprisingly watery even with no rain for months and I don't waste water watering that corner of the yard. I've tried aging them on the counter (so far the best), in the fridge, eating only the yellowest ones... nothing worth fighting a wasp over. I can buy better tasting pears at Food Lion!!!

My goal is to shape up the old tree and then graft facier types onto it.

Your neighbors tree may have poor quality fruit.

Sounds like you have a keifer, John. that describes it to a T, which is why i was so mad i got that instead of seckle (mislabeled). They probably would make good rootstock- hmmm. you have me thinking, now.... Maybe we'll go together and try the same thing?

It can't be that hard to do. I think I've seen sources for scion wood online and I don't remember it being all that expensive either. May take a while to get a crop but I don't care.