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GMLc took a Sunday drive, first to the Charleston Tea Plantation on Wadmalaw
Island, then to Rosebank Farms, our favorite local produce market, at the
end of Bohicket Road on Johns Island. Before we get into this story, let us
confirm that Bohicket Road should be driven at 45 mph or slower. Those who
passed GMLc are warned: Those oak trees will jump out in front of your car
when you least expect it.
Anyway, Rosebank was closed (winter hours: Tuesday-Saturday), but we noticed
a big sign on the roadside near it that said: "Who tek Mr. Sidi's figs
tree?"
Pluff-mudders will know that the question in Gullah means there was more
than one fig tree. Sidi Limehouse, owner of Rosebank Farms, said the fig
trees were at Mullet Hall, property formerly owned by him and his family. He
said part of the agreement to sell Mullet Hall to developers allowed him to
cultivate and harvest the figs until the new owners - The Beach Company and
other developers - needed the land.
Limehouse said he has harvested the figs from those trees to make fig
preserves to sell at Rosebank Farms for the last 10 years. Recently,
"Somebody in their big outfit decided they wanted to do something with the
fig trees. So they just came and took 'em," he said. "It's just a different
interpretation of their needs. But they didn't have to take the fig trees. I
could have moved them."
"Sidi has no rights to that property, period, end of story," said Larry
Weeks, facilities director for Kiawah Development Partners. "He does have an
agreement to utilize two buildings that are still on that tract of land. Two
little buildings are the only agreement he has. We moved those fig trees
because we're reforesting that land with pines, oaks, cedars," Weeks said.
"We've replanted everything. We moved 'em rather than destroy 'em. We moved
them to another part of the property. If he has been harvesting figs, he has
done so without our knowledge. If he has been doing that, he had no
agreement to do that. ... (It's) a mountain out of a molehill."
GMLc urges any people who might be near the replanted fig trees to pick the
figs QUICKLY after they ripen on the tree. In the Lowcountry, it's hard to
beat the birds to fresh figs.
Drivers to Kiawah or Seabrook islands also might notice the other side of
the "figs tree" sign. It has a white elephant on it and it reads: "Ded ahed."
That's a reference, Limehouse said, to "that big shopping center over
there," Freshfields Village, built by Atlantic Partners LLC, an affiliate of
Kiawah Development Partners, and opened last spring in the elbow between
Kiawah and Seabrook islands.
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