In Poljica near Zadar, Sandra Babac and her husband Alan Damjanić pick figs one by one in tree plantations and delicious Mediterranean fruit trees, planted in regular rows. The rain is approaching and the hard-working couple, who are also helped by their children, are trying to pick the ripe fruit in time to keep all the sweetness and sweetness. Then, the freshly picked fruits, previously prepared for processing, will be transformed into delicious jams, which Sandra has been cooking for years and placing on the market under the authentic name "Šinjorina Smokva".
The business with figs, just like starting a family farm, are pioneering ventures that Sandra embarked on back in 2004, after a successful career as a journalist. She and her husband, a native of Zagreb, decided to make a turning point in their lives by returning to the countryside after having their first child, and the key moment in the fig business was the construction of a fruit processing plant, financed in part by IPARD funds.
RETURN FROM ZAGREB
In fact, some things happened to them by chance or should have happened by chance, which is already a philosophical category. Sandra tells us that she was sitting under a fig tree on the family estate in Poljica. It was at this time that she was thinking about what to do with her life after giving birth to a child and returning from Zagreb, when she noticed several figs falling from a tree.
- The fig tree in Dalmatia is always a fruit "from the side", it is not uncommon to see neglected trees from which delicious fruits fall off. I guess I got some heat stroke that day, mostly, I picked figs from that tree in front of the house on the family estate and thought what to do with them. I remembered that a great jam can be prepared from figs and I decided to cook it, according to a traditional recipe. I cooked the first jam on the chimney in front of the house. It turned out great, so we decided to pick more fruit and we moved the business to a small garden kitchen. There, my father designed an electric cooking mixer from the ceiling using an electric Golf wiper motor. The first "Šinjorina Smokva" jams were cooked in that garden kitchen, but the real turning point happened when we built a modern production plant,
- The biggest "invention" in all this is our "Balthazar". Namely, we call it a machine that cooks jams under pressure, from where they are filled directly into jars. This is perhaps the biggest "secret" of our fruit spreads "Shinjorina Smokva", which otherwise consist of only one ingredient - fruit. So, no preservatives, no added sugars, no additives, dyes ... You eat from a jar only fruit thickened in jam. And by processing we try to keep it as original as possible and keep it in a jar, because the harvested fig can not last long and it is actually the only way to enjoy it all year round, except, of course, dried figs and its products - says Sandra. We only see the "heart of Shinjorina Smokva", the "Baltazar" machine.
