I have been home a day now and have some comments on the festival.

The Good
1.  The cakes were excellent
2.  There was cakes at the vendors for tasting
3.  Chester's talk was great.


The not so good
1. Almost no fig trees for sale  I think there were 10 trees total
2. It would be nice if they could get varieties named.  Especially the older, unique variety.  All the yellow gold figs are Lemon but there are 3-4 based on season.
3. Cake tasting...Leaving a dozen cakes, 30-40 people, 2 knives created a huge mess with many people behaving badly.  That should be clean up.
4. Everything happens on Friday
5. Shade!  It was too hot sitting out in the sun.
6. No fresh figs for tasting.   This is a picture of Chester Lynn and Della Gaskill (who made the fig preserves).  The fig tree in the back is what Chester calls Blanche Howard.  He says they call it a type of brown turkey.  The figs were not really brown but a light tan and green color.  I found a few ripe ones (way in the back of the bush) and Dennis and I both though they were pretty good. 

 
These are the figs from Chester's talk.  The two bowls of large figs are what they call "Pound".  They were not a big as they should be but still a nice size.  The smaller, dark ones are what they call Blue Figs.  The pound fig has a good flavor but not great.  I think it would be a great fig for stuffing with things.  I'll keep you updated on how thing go with my Pound Fig.

Thanks for the update. No figs to taste?!! How can that be? But you snuck a few from the back of the tree & thats better than nothing!

How can we improve this event?  I would like to see it become bigger and better.  Is there someone who is in charge that maybe could join this forum or can we contact them somehow?  I am native to NC and I love Ocracoke.

I should correct one thing.  I got to taste the pound fig at the end of Chester's talk and the same with the blue. 
There were about 14 Pound figs and 8 Blue figs for the event.  By the time of Chester's talk a lot of people had left. 
I really liked Orcacoke.  I would be difficult to make it too much larger as the venue is limited in size.

Sharon, the committee asked if I could bring some trees and ripe figs next year.  I told them I would try.

I really enjoyed the trip.  Next year, I will take my EZ-UP along with some tables and chairs.  I should have plenty of Pastilere, Hardy Chicago and Atreano figs to taste next year.  I'm planting about 20 trees this Fall.

Land prices are outrageous but Jackie and I are looking around for property there.  I took pictures of some trees.  I'll post them later this weekend.  

This article in the Sacramento Bee published today includes the winning cake recipe from the Orcacoke festival last year:

http://www.sacbee.com/food-drink/recipes/article97246952.html  (near the bottom)

Thats a good article, Harvey. Thanks for sharing! I will definately make at least the cake but all of the recipes seem great. If I had trees that produced enough figs, i would try all of them.