Chop off the top of pear tree?

[ducks4you]

You should read up on how to prune the specific fruit tree that you own. Somebody gave me a 1970's vintage textbook on caring for fruit trees, which included a chapter on each fruit that is grown in the US (and the world) and specifics for each kind of fruit. You prune differently for apple than you do for peach, for instance. I am new to pruning my fruit trees. When I moved to my 5 acres in 1999 there were 3 apple trees and one peach tree. I have since planted two tart cherries, 2 pear (one died), one Johnathan apple (which I snapped, so it is now whatever the root stock WAS), and another peach. LAST March was the first time that I pruned ANY of them, but everybody that cheered me one HERE at TEG was right. The trees I pruned responded by very vigorous growth. The only one that may not make it was about 25 ft tall and should have been pruned before--I have lost 3/4 of the original GD apple tree. We will see what happens to it this year. It DID produce apples in 2013 and has buds, just two limbs are really gonna need chopping in the early Spring.
DH was delighted with our 2013 cherry harvest and we want to keep it short. A friend has a 20 ft. tall tart cherry and cannot reach the top, so the birds get the lion's share of the fruit. =/

 

[fair weather chicken]

no leg pulling we live in an area with lots of orchards and we have a friend who owned one of those machines, except his had saw blades on it, it was capable of doing sides as well as tops. he did mostly apple orchards, and yes the interior trimming was done by hand with a hi ranger type of machine towed by a tractor.