I have a collection of eight different varieties of fig trees planted beside our barn. The good soil and sunny location make it a perfect spot to grow them. Most of the plants have lost their tags, so I have no idea which one is which ... but I do know that the last one in the line, whatever it is, is the first one to produce ripe fruit and it is my best producer.
This thing is loaded with figs!
The tree next to this one is also full of fruit, but none of them are quite ripe yet.
Figs ripen their fruit over the course of a few weeks, so it's important to harvest them every few days. If you don't ... the varmints will beat you to it.
Figs don't keep ... which is why you just won't find fresh figs at the store.
You know a fig is ripe if it is soft, begins to hang from its stem (instead of sitting stiffly out from the main stalk), and it begins to look a little wrinkly around the top of the neck where the stem attaches. I carefully snap the fruit off the tree, pick off the remains of the stem, and pop them into my mouth right out there in the yard.
Up until this year, all of our figs were eaten fresh because we never had enough at any one time to do anything with. This year, I hope I can use them to actually make something ... fig jam, perhaps.
Here is today's harvest.
I've already eaten half a dozen of these. I am going to wash and refrigerate the rest of them, adding new ones to the stash for the next few days until I have enough to make jam.