Me too. Keiffer is my earliest blooming pear. In fact, its early enough it appears some have been damaged by frost.
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Believe it or not improved kieffer though one of my earliest seldom loses its crop. Here is a picture from March 2016 confirming what your saying about it being early! 2016 was a great year for fruit regardless Here comes the 2016 apple and Pear harvest! 
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Kieffer and Orient have been my most dependable. Through it all they give me fruit each season. I have a few newbies in my back yard and I’m hoping they will do well also (Golden Boy and Frost).
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Some Apricots blooms are open and plums are close which means pears will be blooming shortly! Look at those fat pear fruit buds! I added one apricot tree picture for reference.
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Those look great Katy!
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Great looking land.
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I am not sure if these are flower buds or not. Second year Ayers Pear. Can somebody take a look and also what you do with those shoots going straight.
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I don’t think so. They look like vegetative buds to me.
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Agree with @coolmantoole those don’t appear to be fruit buds yet. In future years I think those spur looking vegetative buds you have now will turn into fruit buds. Ayers like any of the small sugar pears can be hard to read in terms of fruit buds. Have seen seckle and other sugar pears suddenly put on fruit buds and bloom much to my surprise. I only knew a couple weeks before hand they were planning to bloom. Ayers is known to be a delayed bloomer and though your tree has the correct shape to bloom that pear typically makes you wait another year or two. Be careful pruning that tree because as you thin it out where those branches are looking untidy if you take to much it will force the tree into setting on more vegetative growth so make your cuts few and where you truly need to prune. Pears are never pretty in terms of branch structure making the best orchardist look like an amateur pruner.
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Looks like leaf buds. My Ayers were slow to start blooming but on the flip side Harrow Sweet blooms early.
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Typically, I have to thin my peaches but this year I noticed many dropping anyway. After petal fall we had several nights in the low thirties. Also, did not see the normal bee activity I see during bloom. I was assuming it was so early this year that the bees just weren’t out in full force. Do you think the peaches below are dropping because of lack of pollination or freeze damage?
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Noticed a big fruit set on Dorsett golden. Might have to thin this year. NEVER had to thin apples before!
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Those peaches don’t look frozen. At least not enough to over thin the crop. When severely frozen they shrivel up within a day or two.
I thin apples hard every yr they don’t get frozen out. I’d leave about 3 apples of those pictured.
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The pears are looking nice so far. Note the plum blooms getting ready to open I added for reference. The pear in the top picture that is so early is Douglas.
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My the Lord spare you from late freezes. It looks like we should have a really good fruit year here so far. God bless.
Marcus
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@coolmantoole
Thank you Marcus! Glad to hear things are going well there. May your fruit crop be abundant and sweet!
Up here in New York Z5b all the kids are still asleep.
Buy, from the bud development on my Cox Orange Pippin it looks like that I will have to bone up on my thinnig knowhow.
All I had was my glove to keep things in focus…so here goes
Mike
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Figured this would be a good thread for a quick pear question…this is my Kieffer, it fruited last season but got hit with FB…this year it was loaded with blossoms and I have a bunch of small fruits starting to grow…
while inspecting the tree, I noticed that some of the blossoms/fruits had started to turn black I immediately removed them from the tree. Should have gotten some pictures, but the best way I can describe it is that some of the stems would turn black and they were very easily pulled off…Keeping a close eye on it, but hoping the tree isn’t a total loss…is there anything I can do to prevent this in the future?
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