The staff at Ticonderoga Farm in Chantilly, Virginia, was cleaning up from the Fig Lover’s Feast when my son and daughter stopped by to purchase a few figs. They sent me the good news via text before they got back on the road to meet my wife and me for a weekend of family visits and events. I asked them to snap a few photos. We had read about the farm during my recent trip to Washington, DC.
There was a line of customers waiting to buy ripe figs to eat and young fig trees that they would plant in their own yards. A sign on the barn wall illustrated four types of figs: Verte, Golden Delicious, Mission and Turkish Delight. My son commented that Turkish Delight is also the name of a coveted dessert in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
My daughter bought $6 worth of Mission and Golden Delicious figs. The Mission figs looked and tasted like ones I got a month ago from my friends John and Heather. You can blame them for my infatuation with the sweet treat. I’m thinking about asking them for a branch tip and attempting to grow my own tree despite my lack of gardening skills. I got the idea from recent stories on NPR and in The New York Times.
Over the course of the weekend, we learned that one of my daughter’s neighbors has a fig tree that they would probably let her harvest rather than let the fruit go to waste. If that works out, I’ll be sending her recipes from Food Network, Martha Stewart and Bon Appetit in the hope that she will make something that she can bring to Christmas dinner.
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