Fings to do with figs

It's getting towards the end of August and our land is looking parched and tired. When I walk around to inspect the olive trees, dry and brittle weeds snap under my feet and a fine brown dust works its way into my sandals, making my feet itchy. But while everything else wilts under the flaring August sun, our fig trees turn into fruit producing machines. Had I the energy I could drag a bucket of figs back to the house every morning.

Six years ago I don't think I'd ever eaten a fresh fig. Now we have ten trees of different varieties and they are like old friends. Some produce an early crop in June, some don't. Most bear green figs but some have a rich dark purple fruit. Some make fat moist figs and others smaller intensely sweet ones. I usually wander around the trees in the morning picking and eating the sun-warmed fruit for breakfast. I break open the fig with my fingers and inspect how moist it is before popping it into my mouth and chewing slowly on the sweet sticky pulp and firm skin. This is the closest eating gets to sex. Milly often follows me in anticipation of being given a fresh fig or two straight from the tree.

By the first week or two in September the crop is pretty much finished, but the taste lingers on for the rest of the year in the various fig products I make: dried figs; green fig chutney; and fig jam. Milly has her own preservation technique: "fig a la tarmac". First let the figs fall onto a handy road, then leave to dry and get run over by passing cars and trucks for at least a week or two. They are then ready to be peeled from the road surface with ones teeth and chewed vigorously for several minutes. These are abundant until Christmas, but if you keep your eyes and your snout open you can often find the odd one as late as the following May. "Boun appetito!"