EHDEN, Lebanon: The farmers of Ehden had all but forsaken their annual pear season this year, but just as they had turned their sights to the apple harvest instead, the region’s pear trees miraculously bore fruit once again.

Farmers were hoping for good prices for their apple crop to compensate for the losses they believed they had sustained due to the poor pear crop earlier this year.

Attempting to explain this unusual phenomenon in the area of Baqoufa, which lies between the towns of Bsharri and Ehden, farmers contemplate the impact of this summer’s high temperatures on their crop. They say the trees may have become more dehydrated than usual due to the long summer days in between watering sessions.

While farmers are surprised at being able to profit from their pear orchards after all, one farmer points out that it is not wholly unique for the trees to bloom a second time.

“In some years the pear trees would blossom a second time,” he said, “but the farmers would cut the blossoms before the trees bore fruit at the end of September, so as not to compromise the following year’s crop.”

But “today the blossoms have already borne fruit and they are growing and will be ready for harvesting in less than a month.”

Another farmer in the area said: “It’s the first time that we have a second pear season in one year.”

Meanwhile, for one elderly resident of the village the pears’ second fruition is cause for bewilderment. “When God used to be angry with the people, he would turn their summer into winter and their winter into summer. What are people going to say now that their autumn has turned into a prosperous spring?”