I do not know if picking and putting up a wide variety of fruits and vegetables is something done more in the south than in other parts of the country or not though I suppose it is common in many places where produce is grown. However, I do know the practice of putting up vegetables and fruits by either canning them or freezing them was something done at the Lee farm regularly during my growing up days. I can vividly remember my Ma’s little storage room out behind her house where there would be rows and rows on multiple shelves of home canned beans, tomatoes, pickles, and other types of vegetables. She continued to do home canning of vegetables even though the practice of putting vegetables up by freezing them was becoming very common by the time I was born.

The reason for this being on my mind was because of a picture I saw a day or so ago of someone cooking figs to make fig preserves. This immediately caused me to think of fig time at the Lee farm when I was a child.

As with most crops, you have to gather figs and process them when they are ripe and ready.  The window of time for this is just a few days and you have to gather (pick) them then or lose the opportunity. My job as a boy was to help pick the figs, a job that I did not enjoy at all. Because I was the youngest and smallest, I was the designated tree climber with the task of going up the limbs of the larger fig trees and picking the figs that could not be reached by my Uncle Homer, Aunt Anne or any of the other adults who were the supervisors of the fig picking.  As we had trees at our home place right beside my grandparents house and also at the home of Uncle Homer and Aunt Anne, picking the figs was a task that would take the better part of a morning. As the figs had to be picked every other day while they were in season, I did not have to wonder about what I would be doing every other day for a period of about two weeks each summer. I was going to be picking figs.

In addition to just not wanting to be working instead of playing, picking figs could also on occasion result in the picker getting a case of “fig poisoning” which is similar to contracting poison ivy.  Fig poisoning is caused by either the leaves or fig juices irritating the skin on the arms or hands, itches like the dickens and lasts for a few days once you get it. I was not really susceptible to fig poisoning much but that meant I was going to be helping to pick the figs. My brother was prone to contract fig poisoning so he got out of the picking most of the time. Not sure that he did not find some way to “come down” with fig poisoning more than most to get out of the picking.

Anyway, though I hated to pick the figs, I must confess that I loved to help eat them once they had been cooked and turned into those sweet preserves. Just cooked, still warm fig preserves, a pan of home-made buttermilk biscuits, a few links of daddy’s sausage,  and a couple of fried eggs with a tall glass of cold milk  made a mighty fine meal for supper or breakfast for a farm boy back then.

I still love to eat fig preserves and even though I still do not like to pick them, I do so with anticipation of the taste of them when they are cooked and ready to eat.

Learning how to gather and process fruits and vegetables like figs is just another of the many reasons for which I am thankful for having been raised on the farm.