Umbrella Figs

Today was day two for preparing for the fair. These days are not consecutive, mind you. They only occur when the exact conditions are right for the product being made. Today was a day for pickled figs and apple chutney.

I've made fig preserves before and, since the figs are now abundant, I wanted to try something different. I found a recipe for pickled figs and thought I would try it. We went to the fig bush late morning and started picking them. It had been cloudy all morning. When we were almost finished, the clouds decided to let go of some of their pent up moisture in the form of rain. Thankfully, it was a slow rain as we made our way back under the fig trees. Once we were under the canopy of the spreading branches, we felt no rain. The leaves made a natural umbrella against the elements. It was nice to hear the raindrops hit the leaves and know that they were protecting us from getting really wet. When the rain started falling harder, we decided to leave the figs for another day and head back to the house.

Once we returned, we had to go to the grocery store to purchase a few items we didn't have for today's preserving. After returning home, the process of pickling began. During the cooking time for the figs, I also started preparing the ingredients for the next recipe--apple chutney. The total time for all that didn't really take as long as we thought considering that we started a little later. So far I am pleased with the results. We tasted the fig pickles and they were very good. We didn't taste the chutney yet, so I hope it came out tasting good. Time will tell.