This is our third time visiting the Coachella Valley, we're in Palm Springs, and we only just found out that the valley produces 90% of the dates the US grows. I doubt I even knew the US grows dates. We went to Shields Date Farm yesterday, in Indio, at the far eastern end of the Valley.
The farm has been in operation since the 30s when an intrepid couple moved to the desert and decided to grow dates. What we learned at Shields is never to complain about the price of dates.
The process to get a date to your mouth is ridiculous and labour intensive. I don't even know where to start; maybe with date seeds always produce a new variety so if you want to replicate a type of date you have to cut off the suckers after they've put down some roots, in a year or two. Then it takes something like 15 years before a tree is big enough to make seeds. But wait, there is no natural mechanism for them to pollinate so somebody has to harvest pollen from the male (1 male tree to 45 females) and apply it by hand to the seeds.
The harvest isn't any easier because they don't take a cluster down all at once like bananas. EVERY day the whole (orchard?) patch gets a going over and individual dates are picked by hand, again, up a 40 foot ladder.
I can't imagine how this inefficient system has kept dates alive for thousands of years but it has to be because people are willing to play out the ritual in order to get the delicious fruit. If you ever see a date shake on a menu, grab it. Yum.
Aside from the date production revelation, we enjoyed a nice lunch on the lovely patio under the shade of the date palm trees.
We also went on "The Walk". If you aren't from British Columbia you'll miss the amusement of this. The Walk is a biographical sculpture garden of the life of Jesus and, me being a car-carrying atheist you're wondering what the heck I was doing there? It was too good a back-story to miss: Bill and Lillian Vanderzalm contacted the Shields Farm in about 2012 to suggest the collaboration because they were closing their theme garden in Vancouver BC. The deal went forward and now there are 14 bigger than life statue vignettes depicting the biblical version of the history of Jesus of Nazareth; in Indio California from Fantasy Gardens in Richmond (Vancouver) BC. The real fantasy is that Bill Vanderzalm was premier of BC and got tossed on his ear when he was caught accepting a $20,000.00 "incentive" from a Chinese realtor. Symbolic might be that the stone in front of the sepulchre is molting its fiberglass.
