Pears for the Picking

I took these pictures out of the window on the back side of my house. The pear tree is in the yard of an older home that was here when my subdivision was built. A typical rural/country plot, it sits on 2-3 acres and is populated with several wild fruit trees, this pear being one of them. Every year the tree loads up with pears which mostly fall to the ground and rot. The tree never gets pruned and is so tall (40+ feet) that most of the pears are inaccessible. When I first moved here I asked the owner if he would mind if I gathered up some of the fallen pears, and even pick a few off the tree, and he said, "Okay" -- not enthusiastically. So I haven't asked again. It's a shame for this food to go to waste every year.