FARMER'S BLOG

Thursday, August 13, 2026 -- Fig Season, reimagined.

"LESSONS IN PIVOTING"

I remember earlier this year when our newly formed crew caught me using the term "pivot" as we managed the spring tasks of the farm.  They liked the utility of the word for the same reason I have learned to embrace it as a farmer.  

Pivoting in essence, is a deeper extension of another phrase I grew up on:  "go with the flow".  Daily, weekly, seasonally, annually -- there are forever moments where in that moment the organic path forward presents itself.  And since childhood, I am a go with the "organic" flow kind of guy, from the way I like to travel to the day to day managing of our farm.  Even as an educator, I found that I connected best with my students when I was keenly aware of our flow together, using opportunities to pivot to keep things engaging.

Sometimes, pivoting means diverging from an otherwise typical course of action.  This is where we find ourselves this fig season.  Farming is real life pivoting.  After an extraordinary season last year, Mother Nature changed things up and we have now found ourselves at the threshold of a necessary pivot which meant canceling our you pick season for figs.  Yikes!  Not at all the outcome we expected or desired, but necessary nonetheless.  You see, that glorious snow we got this past January along with the ice the week prior, yeah, that ended up being not that great for most of our fig orchard.  Fig trees have very thin bark which means the cambium layer just underneath is very susceptible to freezing in extreme cold, even when the tree is dormant during winter.  And our seven year old Alma trunks (most of our main orchard) were completely killed back to the ground.  "c'est la vie!" as the French would say.

The trees have grown back beautifully, yet alas without copious amounts of figs.  They have had to focus on regrowth.  And our giant brown turkey tree and main celeste tree in the orchard stayed true to their durable nature and are ripening off currently.  But to meet the demands of a you pick season, it just wasn't going to work going from some 16 trees down to just two.  So the time came to "pivot".  And here we are.  I'm trying to figure out how I still get this beautiful fruit to customers in a "we pick" fashion.  And now the challenge.

Figs are extremely fragile fruit.  Take what you know about raspberries, and multiple that by say five.  Yep, figs are delicate, especially if you are picking them at peak ripeness.  And then the clock starts counting down.  12 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours, gone.  Or done, or over.  Yep, that's how long figs last.  You can't pick them green, although you can cheat a smidge and pick them a little firm, aka not 100% ripe.  You can freeze them.  You can eat them for the wonderfully sweet and delicious fruit that they are.  You can buy yourself maybe all the way to 48 hours if you carefully refrigerate them.  But that's it.  "c'est fini!" as the French would also say. (I'm a former German language teacher, fyi.  But I've always had a soft spot for these beautiful french maxims.) (Thank goodness for our ability to spell check with google!  You do not spell French at all like it sounds!)

I digress.

So here I am.  Master of one trying to salvage what was to be our fig season and enjoying bites along the way!  In the last 24 hours, I have come up with a few ideas to accommodate this pivot.  I'm envisioning a sort of "fresh now" spot on our homepage that spotlights what my evening picking yields.  You know, like the famous southern donut chain does with their neon sign that pops on at all hours of the day and night.  I'm wondering if I can light up our website neon sign at 8 pm each evening, and signal what's available for next day pickup.  I need it to be as easy as possible.  And this is certainly a lot to take on while running a flower farm!  But I'm a farmer.  And these sorts of pivots are just what we have to do.  After all, they keep us awake and on our toes and remind us to stay humble in our trade!  Lessons in pivoting for sure.

Off to pick some fruit.

Cheers, Farmer Larry