Feelin' figgy? Take a bite of this delicious fruit

Fresh figs don't grow well much farther north than Hampton Roads, but they were a part of my summers growing up in Richmond because my grandfather willed it so.

Grandpa came from Norfolk, and had he not been able to baby his fig bush through Richmond winters, I think he would have found life hardly worth living up there.

To Grandpa, figs were like the Lynnhaven oysters that my uncle always brought up to Richmond on holidays: Both kept memories of home alive.

Though figs are indigenous to Asia and parts of the Mediterranean, they may as well be native to Hampton Roads, too. They were brought to America early, and for generations it was a tradition for many folks to have a backyard fig bush. For old-timers, the fruit is still a part of the good-eating culture here.

Newcomers, if you think you know what a fig is because you have tried Fig Newtons, please don't let your association with this yummy fruit end there.

The two cannot be compared, said Tony Swoope, who has raised figs in Virginia Beach for almost 40 years.

"There's a whole different world between figs and Fig Newtons," he said.

No cookie, or fruit, for that matter, can be compared to tender, sweet fig meat with its slightly crunchy pink interior.

Along with picking them off the tree and eating them right on the spot, folks in the know love figs with sugar and half and half for breakfast, with a liquor over ice cream for dessert, made into lemony preserves and spread on toast for breakfast, or stuffed with soft cheese and wrapped in prosciutto as an hors d'oeurve.

Rob and Sybil Mays used to raise figs and other fruits for the nursery trade in Blackwater. The couple even dries figs in a "cheap" dehydrator to the point where they are "chewy but not brittle," and then freezes them to use for snacks and in cookies and other baked goods.

"These are a fabulous improvement over the pretty tasteless, processed dried figs available in grocery stores," Sybil Mays said. "Rob makes a fabulous Chicken Marbella with ripe figs rather than prunes. Delish!"

Oh, it is delish, the things you can do with figs for this short brief spell that they are ripening on trees around Hampton Roads.

Juanita Swoope, Tony's wife, might be called the queen of fig jams, jellies and preserves in this area. She puts up several types of fig condiments, and jars upon jars of the tasty concoctions line her kitchen cabinets, rum figs, ginger figs, fig jam, fig preserves with lemon, pickled figs.

For party food, Juanita cuts a fig in half and puts cream cheese and a dollop of fig jam on top, or she might mix a touch of mustard with fig jam to make a breadstick or pretzel dip.

The Swoopes have two fields of figs - about 85 bushes in all - in Pungo, just a quarter of a mile from the shore of Back Bay. Call them and they 'll pick figs to order. They have five varieties, which means they should be ripening for the next month or so.

Thanks to the Swoopes, who supply some farm markets, and a few backyard fig growers, who also take their figs to roadside stands, you can still get figs locally in August.

But for some, like Carolyn Payne of Virginia Beach, figs are mainly fruits that memories are made of.

"I associate them with a bygone era," she said. "You just can't find them that readily anymore."

That's because, in "bygone eras," there was a fig bush in most every yard, like there was in Payne's godparents' yard in Oceana. Thinking of figs brings back sweet memories of her godparents, she said.

"We'd walk over to the fig tree and peel them and eat them right under the tree. The challenge was to find the figs the birds hadn't eaten."

Birds and squirrels love figs, Tony Swoope said. Otherwise, the fruit is easy to grow in Hampton Roads.

"Figs are not a hard plant to grow," he noted. "Few bugs bother them... (But) pick them early in the morning before the birds get out."

He goes the extra mile, fertilizing his figs once a year in the fall with horse manure. He also might give them a little lime because they don't like too much acid.

And, he added, "They grow fast. Give them plenty of room."

The Swoopes said Hampton Roads is the borderline area for figs. The plants don't like hard freezes, but this winter, like most years, the weather was just right.

"This year the fig bushes are as pretty as ever," Tony said.

Mary Reid Barrow, barrow1@cox.net