20 



THE KADOTA FIG 



Even now we may finish drying our fruit in the shade, tray on tray or in 

 sheds, and by dipping our dried fruit in a 2 or 2J/29< salt solution and then 

 packing them temporarily in receptacles free from the infestation of the fig 

 pests, we will derive great good. Deliver early to the packers that they may 

 properly process and carton the fruit. For home supplies or for gifts to distant 

 friends, dip dry figs in boiling salt water (2 oz. salt to one gallon of water) 

 and immediately, while heated through and through and still dripping, place in 

 tins, press down lid, and seal with wax and the fruit will remain sterilized, 

 moist and perfect for years. Even card-board, wax-dipped, or empty coffee tins 

 are very good. 



Under the above caption I ask my readers to permit me a little digression. 

 From earliest childhood I have loved the fig, and worshiped the spreading fig 

 tree. Location and climatic conditions in my boyhood home made impossible 

 the successful growing of the commercial fig, yet distance did not discourage 

 my intimacy with the occasional fig tree planted by the early Spanish settlers 

 in my California birthplace. I knew every tree, its actions and production 

 for 20 miles on every side. Their lack of care and protection hurt me as the 

 suffering of a little child. The balsam-like odors of the old fashioned tree, 

 that filled the coft and balmy summer nights, was rarest perfume to me, and 

 no fruit that grows is half so delicate and delicious to my man-grown fancy 

 as was the ofttimes stolen fruit of those lonesome and neglected fig groups. 

 In rocky canyon beside the clear cold springs, or in valleys, near adobe-walled 

 home of Spaniard or Forty-niner, then stood and yet stand today these monu- 

 ments to our early settlers. Ever they bear and ever as sweet as then. With 

 sadness and sorrow have I sat my little mustang pony under the shadows of 



Six year old Kadota. Picker gathering 1 fresh fruit 



