Fig Season

Some people get a little squeamish when it comes to figs. Not me. They are the most exotically luscious, sexiest fruit I've encountered. Each bite inviting the next.

Like a gift from heaven I happened upon a fig tree in a small yard who's owner disdained the fruit. Sweet Bertie's husband planted the tree over 30 years ago and now she has given me permission to "Take as many as you can eat. I don't like them!" So come late summer I load my ladder onto the Hummer and head to Bertie's 1940's bungalow to rescue as many figs from the birds as possible. The only thing I know about these figs is that they are LARGE, elongated and that Bertie's husband was given the whip by a German workmate at the Boeing Company. I'm assuming they are a hardy German variety as Bertie told me her husband simply "stuck the stick in the ground". I have yet to find anything resembling them from my research.

So, what to do with all those figs? First and formost...eat as many as possible fresh from the tree! That means Figs with Goat Cheese...

Mission figs with goat cheese drizzled with honey served with rosemary flatbread

 Grilled figs...

Drizzled with honey and espresso balsamic 

And then process figs to substitute when fresh figs have become the makings of only dreams.

Fig Jam

Bertie's tree is large and keeps on giving into early Autumn, as long as our Indian Summer lasts. It is a tree that sets a breba crop in late fall that, in my area, does not make it through our cold winters. Then in Spring it sets the Autumn crop of which we are harvesting now. So, this tree has unripe fruit on it all year except in the coldest part of winter when the breba crop shrivels and falls to the ground.

In two weeks I'll visit Bertie's fig tree again and then again in two weeks until the nights are crisp and the Grand Dame gives up for the winter.

UrbanTerra prides itself on gleaning fruit from homeowners who are unable or unwilling to do so themselves. In return to the homeowner, we give back some of the processed fruit as "payment" for their generosity. We love meeting our neighbors and making new friends like Bertie. If you have fruit trees you'd like us to harvest and live in the Seattle/Bellevue area, please contact me either by commenting on this blog or emailing me at lydia@expressionslandscapedesign.com.

Happy Harvesting!