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Bounty of figs doubles size of plant
Published August 31, 2009
Before designing the Angleton Fig Plant back in the 1920s, Frank K. Stevens visited similar operations in a number of other area towns.
“I had been impressed with the need to get rid of steam in the building,” he wrote in his book, “Memories of Seventy-Eight Years in Brazoria County.” He explained that the Angleton plant was constructed with a long vent on the ridge of the roof to allow steam to escape.
In addition, windows of the building were 8 or 9 feet in height, he said, and were “so arranged that when you raised one a foot at the bottom, it would open up one-third of that at the top.”
If the bottom sash was raised 3 feet at the top, it would come down 1 foot at the bottom, allowing the steam and hot air to escape, he explained.
“I have never seen any like them,” he wrote, “but they did the job very well.”
The process required the use of great quantities of water, so shallow drains were placed in the concrete floor.
At that time the city of Angleton had no community water facilities, so a deep well was dug near the fig plant, and a boiler and pump were installed to supply at least 100 gallons per minute.
Pipes supplied the water to various parts of the plant, and the extensive piping inside included insulated steam piping. The steam was used for scalding the figs as well as for cooking them and in other operations.
“We installed a mezzanine floor on which to store the empty paper boxes and cans and bottles, all of which we bought in carload lots,” Stevens said.
Even in the first season, the newly planted fig trees produced well, but by the second year, the yield was so much greater that it required near doubling of the plant size.
“After it was all done, we had about 20 aluminum kettles, and I think 18 of these were of 200-gallon capacity each,” Stevens recalled. Two 50-gallon kettles also were available for use in holding small batches.
“A 200-gallon kettle of cooked figs is a beautiful sight, but there is a lot of labor that goes with the job of putting them into the bottles and capping them, and sterilizing them, labeling the bottles and packing in shipping cartons,” he wrote.
Saying he would not attempt to explain everything that was done, he noted that as the figs came in, they were dumped from the baskets in which they were packed into a large vessel full of boiling water with “a lot of lye in it (known as caustic soda).” The fig skins were largely removed by this process, Stevens said.
In most other area plants a bushel or so of figs was dumped into a container of the hot lye water, were stirred around to loosen the skin, and then sent to a trough through which they floated to the women who finished the peeling.
“I did not like this arrangement, and I worked out a plan for a better system,” Stevens said. He took his idea to a local iron working shop, which made a screw-type implement with projecting spuds.
This would take the figs to a certain point, after which they would fall back and the screw would take them on to the end of the hot bath.
From there they would fall into a trough of running water and on to the peeling tables. This “invention” was so successful that some of the older fig plants copied it for their own use.
Sometimes as many as 75 to 80 women worked late into the night peeling figs, removing all the peel that had not been taken off by the hot lye bath.
“One night in the midst of this, with about 75 women working, a light went out,” Stevens said. He climbed up on one of the wet peeling tables with wet shoes to take out the old bulb and put in the new one.
“The instant I grasped the brass receptacle I was electrocuted to all practical purposes,” he said. “I went out like a light and have no recollection of any pain or shock. This was very nearly curtains for me. ...”
Because he was standing on the peeling table, he fell, tearing his hands from the brass socket. According to the women who witnessed this incident, he was “stiff as a board,” with his feet remaining on the table while the back of his head struck the concrete floor.
“I don’t think I regained consciousness until I had been taken home and put to bed,” he wrote. “My head was sore and after a day or two they took me to Houston and had an X-ray made and it showed a crack about three inches long in my skull.”
He quipped that he had probably “been cracked ever since,” but had never had any trouble as a result of the accident beyond an occasional soreness where the crack was located and a lifelong caution in handling electric fixtures.
The plant’s employees had little trouble learning to make a good product, including preserved and bottled figs. Because the fruit was very ripe, a good many of the figs were broken, and these were usually packed in cans.
Although these broken figs were generally better tasting than the more beautifully packed ones, they “were not so enticing to look at,” Stevens explained.
“The glass jars filled with choice ripe figs had to be sterilized by being run through a vat of boiling water for about 45 minutes,” he said.
A long trough lined with galvanized iron was constructed.
A carrier belt 3 to 4 feet wide was run through this vat to carry the figs in jars. The belt moved very slowly to give the jars their 45 minutes in the boiling water.
“This was a homemade contraption,” Stevens recalled, explaining that it was operated with only a one-fourth or one-half horsepower motor.
Despite skeptics who said a motor that size could not pull a load of “perhaps a ton of glass jars of figs,” it appeared to be ample.
He explained it operated with a long, round leather belt similar to that used on old sewing machines. This belt ran over a center groove in a wooden wheel approximately 4 feet in diameter.
The design increased the power ratio, he said, explaining that the wheel was mounted on a steel shaft with a “regular gear train to get the speed down” so the belt would move less than one foot per minute.
Next week: Slow sales, seasonal work pose problems.
Marie Beth Jones, a published author and freelance writer based in Angleton, is chairwoman of the Brazoria County Historical Commission.
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