Figs, Birds, and Mosquitoes

One late evening I was invited to my neighbor’s house to pick figs in the backyard.  The tree was huge and was bowed over with those brown sweet figs. We used a crooked stick to pull the branches down to pick the figs, which were growing on high limbs. Bending over we also found ripe figs hidden beneath the large leaves.

The old-fashioned fruit bearing fig tree is so old it is mentioned in the Bible…. Remember the fig tree that bore no fruit?

There are several types of figs grown in the U.S. namely: Sierra Figs which are green in color, the Brown Turkey fig, and the Black Mission Fig.

The enemy of the fig tree is drought, and birds. Fig trees thrive on slow summer rains.  Birds love ripe figs! You almost have to pick early in the morning to beat the birds to the real ripe figs.

Mosquitoes are human’s worst enemy while trying to pick figs.  In the warm humid South the mosquitoes will eat you up when you appear at the fig trees.  So first, before you go out to the fig trees you must wear long sleeves, long pants and cover yourself with “Off” bug spray.

All of the figs don’t ripen at the same time so you have to pick them usually every other day. Figs will ripen at room temperature if they are picked before ripening.

A favorite way, besides just eating the figs, for my mother was to can them.  I recall my mother canning pint jars of fig preserves.   Later, she would use the fig preserves to make fig cakes.  Today, some of my friends use strawberry jello in canning the figs.

After I married, I used my mother’s handwritten fig cake recipe to make fig cakes.  I entered one of my fig cakes in the Jefferson County Fair at the fairgrounds one autumn and won a first prize!

Now, I just eat my neighbor’s figs for enjoyment!

Jean Butterworth

Tags: Figs, Home Town Story, Remember When

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 7th, 2009 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Arts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.