Valley Bounty: Dancing Bear Farm Figs

Published August 3, 2024 in the Daily Hampshire Gazette and Greenfield Recorder

Fresh Figs? In Massachusetts?

Leyden Farm unlocks new flavors and farming possibilities

By Jacob Nelson

It’s rare to try an entirely new food as an adult. Rarer still to realize it was growing under your nose the whole time.

Before he started farming them in Leyden, Tom Ashley had never eaten a fig outside of a Fig Newton. Even the idea of fig trees thriving in New England was new to him. Now, he and his wife and farming partner, Trish Crapo, are helping others discover the joys of growing and eating their own fresh local figs.

Dancing Bear Farm has grown unique produce for over 40 years. At one point their fields spanned five acres, but now they’ve scaled back to focus on greenhouse crops, namely fresh figs and young fig trees.

“Everyone thinks what makes this farm unique is the figs,” says Crapo, “but I think it starts with Tom. Tom loves the challenge of an unusual crop. Thirty years ago, he was one of the first people to grow heirloom tomatoes around here. Then it was different kinds of garlic and specialty peppers. Whenever others try to copy him, he pivots and finds another niche. I think he’ll always be growing something interesting.”

Figs, in Ashely and Crapo’s eyes, are interesting for many reasons. They’re an ancient crop cultivated for thousands of years since being domesticated in western Asia. These storied roots, coupled with the novelty of finding them in New England, add to their mystic. For many people, figs also are a connection to family and home. For example, several of Dancing Bear Farm’s customers have shared stories about immigrant relatives carefully tending fig trees that made the transatlantic voyage with them, whose fruit flavored their childhood.

Figs themselves are also an enigma. Are they a fruit? A flower? Is there really a dead wasp inside every fig, as the rumor goes? The answers are yes, yes, and usually no. Figs are technically a collection of inverted flowers that bloom inside the fig pod and mature into a compound fruit. And while many wild figs rely on specific fig wasps to pollinate them, most commercially grown figs – including those grown at Dancing Bear Farm – are self-pollinating instead.

Ashely and Crapo’s fig journey began with a gift from a longtime customer they now call their “fig mother.”

“She brought us four dead-looking sticks,” says Ashley, “cuttings from her fig tree in Brooklyn. She said, ‘stick these in your greenhouse and see what happens.’ And I said, ‘yeah, sure Marie. Figs?’ I had never eaten one, and I didn’t know if they’d even grow.”

They humored her, planted the cuttings, and had a small harvest within a year. “I ate my first fresh fig, and it was great,” says Ashley. “Sweet but light – completely different than anything I’d tried before.”

Ashely and Crapo were sold on figs, but knew that full grown 20-foot fig trees wouldn’t fit inside their existing greenhouse. They pruned them heavily, planting any viable cuttings so that they might become new trees too. Soon their fig tree collection outgrew the greenhouse anyways, convincing them to tear it down and build a larger, glass-paneled structure they call their Figtorium. Today it houses seven mature in-ground fig trees, thriving in what Crapo calls “a slice of Mediterranean climate.”

Today, those seven fig trees can produce over 1,000 figs each year per tree, starting in August. That’s over 700 pounds of figs, most of which are sold to nearby restaurants and bakeries like Great Falls Harvest in Turners Falls, Hope & Olive restaurant and Rise Above bakery in Greenfield, and Sweet Lucy’s Bakeshop in Bernardston.

As Ashely explains, the main reason figs shipped in from far away can’t compare to local ones is that, unlike most fruit, figs don’t ripen after picking.

“To have any shelf life, most figs are picked under-ripe,” he says. “The best way to enjoy a fig is to pick it off your own tree or come to the farm and get one picked that day.”

Dancing Bear Farm does sell some figs directly from the farm. These days though, they mostly sell the fig trees themselves, which can supply customers with their own harvest of fresh figs for years to come.

The yearly care for a fig tree is not excessive, but figs do have different needs than most local fruit trees. For those interested, Ashely has three pieces of advice.

The first is to have a plan for the winter. Left outside and unprotected, the bitter New England cold will kill any fig tree. Instead, Ashely encourages people to plant them in large 15-gallon pots that can be moved indoors during winter and back outside when spring returns.

The other two tips are about pruning. Fig tree branches should be heavily pruned every fall once the tree has gone dormant and before moving it inside. He also suggests a heavy root pruning every three to five years. Both practices ensure the tree habituates to its potted life and continues producing a lot of figs.

To help customers learn, Dancing Bear Farm has a how-to video on root pruning on their website. For branch pruning advice, Ashley also invites customers to send him pictures of their trees via email and he will mark suggested cuts.

With rich and subtle flavors, figs are incredibly versatile in dishes ranging from sweet to savory and casual to fancy. Homemade fig jam goes great with soft cheeses or spread on toast. Figs added to red sauce thicken it and add a delightful sweetness. Among their business customers, Hope & Olive once made a fig cocktail with muddled figs and fig leaf simple syrup, while Sweet Lucy’s Bakeshop often makes a homemade Fig Newton-style fig bar of their own.

One of Ashley’s favorite fig recipes is a fig marsala reduction sauce. “After I cook a steak or pork chops in a skillet, I’ll remove the meat, add some wine to the pan, shallots, and figs,” he explains. “Smash it all up, let it reduce, and drizzle it over the meat.”

It sounds fancy and exotic, but it’s pretty straightforward and approachable. Just like growing figs in western Massachusetts, it turns out.

Dancing Bear Farm is now accepting inquiries about figs and fig trees. Contact information is listed on their website: dancingbearfarm.com. Text and email are best.

Jacob Nelson is communications coordinator for CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture). To explore more local food and farms in your neighborhood, visit buylocalfood.org.