FORREST Gump and Buford ‘Bubba’ Blue might have started it with shrimp, but Gaye Zappia has ended it with her figs.
It went something like this, according to Bubba: “Shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sauté it, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. There’s pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That, that’s about it”.
But in Cabarita it now goes something like this, according to Gaye: “The fig is the fruit of the tree. You can have fig jam, fig and ginger jam, fig bites, fig rumbles, fig and roasted almond nibbles, fig syrup, fig hot chilli sauce, glazed figs, fig paste, fig relish, fig delights, fig chutney, natural figs, rich chocolate fig bar, fig rollups, Nonna’s fig biscuits and that, that’s just the start”.
Gaye Zappia has a remarkable story to tell, how 30 years ago she and husband Don gave up with vines and did the hard yards turning a renovated block near the airport into a home for 1200 trees, cash on such short supply they launched their little fig empire off the back of cuttings and determination.
Running that many trees, which would all be hand-harvested, starting in January, for three to four months every year, decade in and decade out, sounds like a big ask – and task. Just ask the Zappias.
“We started with two trees on another property, and we started harvesting them and the rest is history,” Gaye added. “We found the small change we received for some of our product helped pay the rates each year, so we did the maths for an expanded enterprise and that’s where those 30 years went.
“Although everything was doing well, after a while things got bad for the vine industry and like us, a lot of people pulled their vines and planted figs, making business that much tougher.
But Gaye was driven by a waste not, want not, approach to the world, so she did the only thing left and turned the whole business on its head.
“When we got the trees established and were producing a lot of figs, we were sending pallets of them everywhere – to Melbourne, Sydney, even Brisbane,” Gaye said.
“But the supermarkets are so demanding, every fig had to be a perfect oval, no marks and not soft. In the end we found we were sometimes throwing away whole pallets of fruit because it didn’t meet those protocols, even though it was perfectly good,” she said.
“So I started taking the rejects and started cooking.”
And she has hardly missed a day of it since then; as the cooking quickly consumed her every minute, spread into a full-blown commercial kitchen (which took over the garage) and filled to overflowing the massive freezer she has there.
Just Figs was born and fortunately Gaye just loves cooking. And cooking. And cooking.
She also had to cook up a lot of recipes because variety would be the big appeal for a developing clientele.
From where the incredible list above evolved – about the only thing Gaye doesn’t marry to figs would have to be, well, shrimp. But give her some time and that might be on the menu next time you take a look at her Sunraysia Farmers Market stall.
Today Gaye has downsized drastically. From 1200 trees to 100 – all Black Mission figs – and on a smaller block closer to home, which backs onto the Merbein golf course.
Downsized, yes. Slowed down? Hardly.
There might not be pallets heading in every direction, every day, but the Just Figs brand has been spreading further by the month, across the border and into South Australia; and down the Murray into Adelaide. Where high-profile retailers such as Tony & Mark’s have her products in a prominent position. as well as turning up to farmers markets and other special events.
In Mildura, her figs are features at chic shops looking for the uber trendy products, with a story and grown and sold locally.
There’s Uncle Monkey’s; PJs, Cellar Door, Sunraysia Produce and the Pooncarie Old Wharf Café stocking her specialties on the local scene and there’s the honesty stall out on the Sturt Highway, where you can pull over, load up and head home (without forgetting to put the money in the cash box).
But the fig, Gaye explained, is a very fickle fruit (it’s actually an inflorescence, but most will be happy with the fruit alliteration).
For example, harvest does last three months and more not because there is too much fruit to pick, it’s just the figs keep growing towards the end of branches.
As fast as you pick them – especially when it’s hot – the stems keep growing and pushing more figs out, so you keep picking them.
Gaye says if you miss them, by so much as one day, the figs still on the trees will still start going soft.
“Not that the soft ones are wasted, they go straight into my cooking pots,” she added. “In fact except for the natural figs, everything goes through my kitchen in one way or another.”
The fig tree might be hardy but there are challenges to running a successful orchard of any kind, and the humble fig is no exception.
Gaye said their figs are almost, but not quite, organic. They have nothing sprayed on them; but Don will use herbicides on the weeds, especially to stop any potential green bridge in its tracks.
Though weeds are not the worst enemy, that honour goes to the insidious fruit fly, the bane of fruit growers across Australia.
“We’ve never had a bird problem; but we hear grape growers complaining about them, and other fig growers, so I guess we have been able to dodge that bullet,” Gaye said.
The only bullet Gaye has not been able to avoid is time. Or more correctly, the lack of it.
In a couple of weeks, she will be in Waikerie for a show and shine and market day, maybe duck down to Adelaide and check on her stockists, then back for the Sunraysia market, or Bendigo, where she recently struck out in the endless hunt for new customers.
She can also reflect, with a wry smile, the final decider about going from commercial figgers to a boutique business.
Every harvest they needed pickers, and plenty of them but those numbers have been dwindling.
“The real problem, by the time we said ‘that’s enough’ was even the pickers were making more money than us, so we knew we had to have a change in something,” Gaye said.
“Funnily enough, though, even though our current enterprise is much, much smaller, we still have the picker problem as we work our way across the region, so margins are still pretty tight in that budget line.”
With an adage or every occasion, Gaye reminds us how 30 years ago she and Don ripped all the vines off their 15 acres out by the airport to put in grapes.
Their downsized operation did “come out of the blue” when they were approached to sell their block at a very reasonable price.
And the first thing the new owner did was pull all the fig trees and replace them with, yes, you guessed it, vines.
“That wheel certainly turned full circle on that one,” Gaye laughed.
Then had to stop talking and get back to the kitchen. Those figs won’t fry, fricassee or flambé themselves.
