This article by Ray Spitzenberger first appeared in Images for East Bernard Express, 22 September 2022.
The slang expression, “I don’t give a fig,” means “I don’t care at all,” and that may be what some of you feel about the subject of today’s column. I will risk your indifference and write about a fruit my parents, my parents-in-law, and my wife and I have loved all our lives. Figs. And fig preserves. So have our kids and grandkids.
There were many areas of food consumption about which my father-in-law, A. B. Davis, and I had serious differences, — for example, he loved raw oysters (gag), and he wanted rice for dinner, not potatoes (in my ethnic family, we ate rice, sweet, only as a dessert). But when it came to figs, we were absolutely in sync!
So, about 48 years ago, shortly after we moved into our home here in East Bernard, my dear old father-in-law planted a Golden fig tree in our yard. It grew to about five feet and produced some of the most luscious, large Golden figs I have ever eaten. And each year we were blessed with the splendid fig preserves my wife made with the figs. She made even better fig preserves than my mother did! Later, A. B. planted a Purple fig next to the Golden, but it was always dwarfed by its neighbor, though we did enjoy some Purple figs, too.
Our Garden of Eden suddenly came to an abrupt end during Valentine’s Week, 2021, when the worst freeze in my lifetime killed our much-loved Golden fig! Spared the Purple but killed the Golden. We are still in mourning.
Figs and fig trees are found in many places in the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testaments, from Adam and Eve trying to hide their nakedness with fig leaves, to Jesus telling his famous parable about the fig tree.
The fig tree was obviously highly regarded by Moses. In Deuteronomy, he describes the “Promised Land” as “a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey . . . “. Figs were very profuse in the lands of the Bible, such as Israel, Egypt, and Greece, and also in Spain, Japan, Tunisia, and many other countries.
Fig trees were not found in the New World until they were brought to Mexico in 1560, and much later, to California, in 1769. Today, 90 percent of figs grown in the United States are grown in California.
Fig trees do not like cold weather, so it’s not surprising to find them spread to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and other Southern States. There are over 700 varieties of figs, and certain varieties prefer different locations from other varieties, all preferring warmer locations.
Now that my wife and I are left with one small, two-foot-high Purple fig, we are faced with the chore of replacing our large Golden fig tree.
After a bit of research, I found that the most popular variety of fig is called “Black Mission,” but Bursa Figs are considered the sweetest. And apparently many folks consider the “Black Genoa” the best.
Since I do “give a fig” about the fruit and the preserves my family and I will enjoy in the years ahead, I’m inclined to plant another Golden Fig, — if for no other reason in memory of my much-esteemed father-in-law. And to be “fully figged,”
-o-
Ray Spitzenberger is a retired Wharton County Junior College teacher, a retired Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod pastor, and author of three books, It Must Be the Noodles, Open Prairies, and Tanka Schoen.