Just the ripe time
YOU won’t find the perfect fig in the grocery store.
The best tasting ones are split through the skin and have a limited shelf life.
That’s one of the reasons farmer Peter Broomhall loves selling his figs to market.
Despite a visibly very dry dam, the 4000 trees on his Amiens property are bearing plenty of fruit ready for a good 2019 season.
“We’ve had to learn to grow them,” Mr Broomhall said.
“We’ve had our problems and we seem to, as best we can, sort them out and we produce a nice product.”
The family purchased the farm in 2004 before making the permanent tree change in 2005.
They started growing raspberries, but planted figs in 2006 and have been producing them since 2010.
Over that time they’ve encountered many challenges in growing the fruit.
“We’ve got to pick every day,” he said.
“If we don’t pick every day the fruit is over-ripe and no good for market.
“It’s very labour intensive and if we get rain the fruit’s no good, it all splits.
“Even the very moist nights – we’re getting a lot of split fruit now because of the humidity.”
However, after taking a bite of one of the “perfect figs” the fruit is bursting with flavour, it’s understandable why consumers come back asking for more.
“We run the risk of picking mature fruit and we run that risk so the consumer will get a good tasting fruit,” Mr Broomhall said.
“We run that risk because we know when we go to the farmers’ markets, we can sell a lot of fruit because it’s that good.
“People come back to our stand every week because it’s (that flavourful).
“We try to do the same as much as we can for the supermarkets so we go as close as we can to full maturity without the fruit (splitting) so the supermarkets buy it.
“It’s got to be picked as close to ripe as possible.”
He recommends people buying in stores look for fruit that’s just starting to split at the eye and fully black or brown in colour.
It should be slightly soft with a little bit of give in the skin.
The drought doesn’t seem to be too much of a concern for the farm – and having already lost 50 per cent of their produce in a previous year, Mr Broomhall knows how to pick himself back up again.
As each tree grows a new leaf it will bear a new fruit starting from the bottom going up to the branch.
New fruit will mature each month along the branch leaving them picking from now until May.
They’ll start pruning between August to September before the trees start shooting between October and December and are ready to pick again in February the next year.