Date night in a date grove

Friday night was our last Yuma Visitor's Center event - Date night in a date grove.

It turns out that this is one of Fodor's Travel Guide's top 10 most unique dining experiences!
http://www.fodors.com/news/photos/worlds-most-unique-dining-experiences#!10-alfresco-dining-in-date-grove

We drove ourselves to Imperial Date Gardens, in Bard, CA.
http://www.imperialdategardens.com/about_us.html

The dining table was set up in the date grove. They had one side of the tent down as it was expected to be windy, but opened it up by the time we were eating dinner.

 

We had quite a beautiful table set for us.

Before we ate, however, we were able to go on a tour with Raoul, who gave us a lot of information about date production.

 The trees that are here in California are descendants of trees that were brought to the US in the late 1920s from Morocco. A disease had started infecting the trees in Morocco, and it was deadly to the trees. A group of shoots were brought from Morocco and kept in quarantine in Nevada for 7 years. Once they were determined to be free of the disease, they were planted in California (Indio) in 1935. Shoots from these plants were planted in this region (Bard) starting in 1944.

We heard multiple times that 6 of the original shoots brought from Morocco are still living in California - known as the "Six Sisters", but I haven't been able to find out anything about them online.

Dates are a very human-intensive crop. These are female trees and they are currently budding.

A closer in shot of the buds.

The trees are hand-pollenated. We were told that up to three trips up the tree are done to do the pollenation. They have a special lift that is used - Raoul indicated that it had multiple platforms that went around the tree - I found a picture online that might be what it looks like:
machine to work on date trees

Some growers don't even plant male trees, electing rather to just purchase pollen. Imperial did have male trees across the street from where we were.

These were female date palms past the parking lot from where we were - these are older (40+ years) than the ones in the grove where we were (more like 10 years old). The older ones produce upwards of 250 pounds of dates a year.

Just behind Raoul is an offshoot on one of the younger trees. They manage the offshoots so they do not take too much from the tree. The offshoots are how the trees are generally propagated. They can be planted as seed, but then the grower would get 50/50 male and female, and the grower really only wants female trees.

 Raoul indicated that the workers go up/down the trees 13-19 times during the growing season. Up to 3 times to hand pollenate. Then additional times to thin out about 90% of the fruit so the tree will produce the large Medjool dates. When they are getting close to harvest, the fruit is bagged both to catch it if it falls off and to protect from birds - harvest may go up/down the trees 3-4 times as they just select the ripe fruit.

This is the area of the first sort - they would remove any foreign materials in the fruit (e.g. pieces of the tree) and identify any fruit that needs to be sun dried or sun ripened before progressing on.

At the end of the building are stacks and stacks of blue trays ready for the harvest to begin (August).

 Raoul said that about 95% of their workers come back year after year which is helpful as they don't have to spend as much time/effort on training.

Once fully processed, the dates are stored in freezers at 10 degrees F. Before the dates can be sold, they are frozen for at least 7 days to kill any bacteria. He recommended that we store dates in the freezer. They can be frozen and thawed many times without damaging the fruit or the taste.

The blue boxes in the back are specific for Imperial Date Gardens. The other two are more generic for the Bard Growers association.

I think this was where the final sorting would be done. He indicated that this area is air conditioned and there are 3 ladies who work on each of the lines - the last one is the most experienced. They are checking for the quality of the dates - making sure that the skins are not loose, that the fruit is firm, etc.

Another view of the final sort line.

We bought a 2 pound box of the "Extra Fine" dates.

During our dinner, a 3 piece string group entertained.

Patti at the table with the string group behind her.

We had dates throughout the meal. There were appetizers that were tasty preludes to what was to come. The meal started with a grilled romaine lettuce salad which was delicious.

Raspberry sorbet

Entree was chicken breast and short ribs.

A shot of the chandelier over our table.

The chef for our meal was Alex Trujillo:
http://www.patioyuma.com/about/
The meal was really terrific, the location was lovely, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!