Well, I can say I am fully addicted to figs right now. So is my 15-year old daughter.
I met someone who has a fig tree, a "taller than the house" fig tree to be exact (see picture). She said I could take as many as I wanted. Little did she know what that meant!!
Went there on an afternoon with the aforementioned daughter. Had a step-ladder, a smallish bucket and a bigger tray. Daughter immediately was turned off by the buzzing of the fig wasp, the bumble bees and the sweat bees who also seem to enjoy figs.
In about 15 minutes, I picked about 100 figs. Not bad but I was not really prepared. I did not have gloves or a long sleeved shirt on. My fingers were getting stuck together as the milky sap took its toll. With a borrowed dehydrator, I was able to dehydrate a bunch of figs and we ate the rest fresh.
A few days later, I called to see if I could get some more. Actually, I just showed up at their door! No problem, I was told. There are more than enough.
Again, lots of buzzing. Only got about 40 figs this time. Enough to think about making fig jam. Turns out, I read the recipe incorrectly: "2 quarts of figs peeled" did not mean "2 quarts of figs which needed to be peeled". It meant "2 quarts of peeled figs."
Another email was lobbed over the fence. No problem I was told, just watch out for the wasps. So, prepared as I ever could be, today I went over with gloves, a long sleeved shirt, a hat, bug spray and a step ladder! The buzzing was intense, but they really did not bother me that much as I had a mission!
The last picture here is the figs I picked today in about 30 minutes ~ well over 200 figs! I could not believe how many ripe figs were on this tree! I think that, with all of the figs I am using up, I will probably have to help the family prune back this tree in the spring! It is the least I can do!
So, during the football game tonight, I will be quartering figs with everyone else in the family. We will hopefully get a nice batch of dehydrated figs, which are remarkably tasty and chewy! Enough to share with the vegetarian college student also. We will soon have a whole lot more fig jam than I initially started out to make too!
That is perfectly fine, in my mind, because I will have the opportunity to enjoy this harvest for a very long time with my family and a very few, select friends!!
