News
In Little Silver, Sweet Figs From An Italian Garden
By Eleanor O'Sullivan
LITTLE SILVER - On a sultry mid-September Sunday, Ennio and Evelina Menna stand at the base of a fig tree that towers over their backyard.
"We planted the tree in 1972; it was one-foot high then. It's from California," Menna says.
It now stands at least 40 feet in height and can produce as many as 100 figs a day.
The Mennas' figs are available at Sickles Market in Little Silver; Menna says the variety is Big Italian White.
Inside the tree are two ladders leaning against the trunk, which Menna, 79, uses to climb to pick the figs. For optimum sweetness, they must be picked when they are soft and slightly brownish at their base, he says. They are shaped like a thimble.
The Mennas, whose son, Pasquale Menna is mayor of Red Bank, moved from Molise, Italy to Montreal in the 1960s, then to Red Bank, and finally to Little Silver in 1971.
"My dad has a spiritual attachment to nature; he enjoys seeing the fruit of his labor and to eat and share it with others," Mayor Menna says.
The Menna family is from what the mayor described as "an isolated area (in Italy) where the people are very self-sufficient. They cultivate and grow their own food, and they do it very well.
"In Little Silver, if it's August, my parents are inundated with figs. In July, it's tomatoes, green beans and eggplant. In October, they make their own wine," Mayor Menna says of his parents.
Bob Sickles says Menna stopped by his Little Silver market last year with a few samples of his figs; they've been brisk sellers since.
"They were beautiful! I love figs, I have for years. They've become more popular in the last few years because they're more available from California now and more people are traveling to Italy, where the figs are delicious," Sickles said.
At the market, Menna's figs sat in a container in the fruit section, near containers of the farm's own blackberries and raspberries. The figs were selling for $.99 cents each in the third week of September.
Over the course of a season, Menna says, he can pick at least 2,000 figs from the larger tree. The end of the growng season is usually late October. In late fall, usually right after Thanksgiving, he covers the tree with blankets, then plastic with holes to prevent mold, all anchored with twigs and leaves from his yard.
If the winter has been mild, Menna can remove the plastic as early as March. Homemade wood slats support the weightier tree branches.
Twenty feet away from the massive fig tree that supplies Sickles and local restaurateurs such as the chefs at Fromagerie and Undici in Rumson, is a smaller but equally vigorous fig tree. It is the parent of the larger tree, standing perhaps a third as tall. Menna says it seemed to have died some years ago but then regenerated; it, too produces figs. The larger tree was grown from an offshoot of the original.
In the growing season, Menna waters the trees each morning and trims them regularly but uses no spray on the actual trees. He does spray the grass at their bases to prevent the spread of prolific ants. The trees have rounded, appealing shapes and are a light, shiny green.
"My father was a gardener; he grew everything! - figs, olives (for olive oil), wine. He had 30 to 40 acres" the elder Menna says.
When the men went away to fight in World War II, says Mrs. Menna, 75, it was the women at home who tended the productive fields. Her family had 100 acres. Day workers helped pick and tend the fields.
A favorite Menna dish is fresh figs sliced over prosciutto.
"It's the sweet and the salty," Menna says.
Mrs. Menna makes her own lasagna, fettucine and chicken soup. The Mayor regularly attends Sunday dinner at his parents' house and often takes food home.
Another local family is growing golden muscat grapes for sale at Sickles Market. The Rumson couple Amy Kresloff and Peter Engle, who operate Two River Winegrowers, a vineyard management business, are acting as brokers for the local family to sell the grapes. Sickles and Fromagerie are among the buyers.
"Bob (Sickles) really believes in supporting locally grown produce. It was his idea to have an area at the market with signs pointing out locally grown things like melons and grapes," Kresloff said.
Eating locally grown food even has its own term:
"locavore," says Sickles. As one would expect of generous spirited people like the Mennas, a blue plate and plastic wrap is brought from the kitchen and a dozen figs are carefully positioned on the plate to be taken home by a visitor.
Mangia!
