CHAPTER XI. 
DRYING AND CURING FIGS. 
GENERAL REMARKS. 
The process of curing figs must necessarily be different in different 
countries, not only directly on account of climate, but because the 
figs are of different qualities, large or small, very sweet or watery, 
thin-skinned or tough, of good drying quality or the opposite. What 
will be set forth here is the method which has been the most success- 
ful in California—suecessful not because these methods are better 
than those employed in Smyrna or Portugal, the homes of the best 
dried figs, but because so far our figs are decidedly different from 
those grown there. The reasons for this are several. In this coun- 
try we have tried extensively only a few varieties of figs out of a 
possible hundred or more.. Many more varieties have of late been 
planted, but the time has been too short to decide which ones have 
come tostay. The fig territory of the Pacific coast is so large and 
conditions so different in different localities that at least ten or twenty 
years must lapse before it will be possible to assign the proper variety 
to the locality best suited to it. A great obstacle in the way of 
extended fig culture is the tendency of the growers to despise small 
or medium-sized figs in their endeavor to imitate the product of 
Smyrna. It is the medium-sized figs which are the successful ones in 
all the Mediterranean countries, except in the valley of the Meander. 
Neither Italy, Spain, France, nor Greece produces large figs for dry- 
ing, but only small or medium-sized ones. Our fig growers should 
concentrate their first efforts in producing a merchantable and sweet 
fig for common use for the middle classes; then large, sweet, and 
showy figs, consumed in limited quantities by the more wealthy peo- 
ple, will be the necessary outcome. Not every place in our fig dis- 
tricts will be suitable for growing the large varieties, but a thousand 
places will be found where ‘the medium-sized figs may be grown and 
cured with profit. The difference in curing different varieties is con- 
siderable, but not great. The size does not count as much in this 
difference as do the inert qualities of the fig—its sweetness and the 
facility with which it dries. It makes a vast difference whether 
the figs are picked from the trees or from the ground in perfect con- 
dition; whether they have to be sulphured before drying in order to 
prevent fermentation and to secure better color, or whether they can 
be dried as soon as gathered. 
181 
