Indio, California

We did the most touristy thing available for the city of Indio yesterday by visiting the Shields Date Garden.

The company was founded in 1924 by Floyd and Bess Shields. Floyd Shields was one of the pioneering date farmers in the still-young date industry of the Coachella Valley.

The buildings definitely have an early 1940’s feel…

Posters advertise what’s available inside. I love how the poster advertising the “Romance & Sex Life of the Date” movie states that it is “in sound & color”. That is a good clue that this establishment has been here a while…

There’s a garden to walk around, but we skipped on that because Sophie was in the car.

I came really close to buying some of this pottery. The dots were added so that they are all raised. Very cute and colorful!

We ordered a couple of beverages for our ‘dinner’.

Rich isn’t a huge date fan so he opted for a Root Beer Float. He hadn’t had one in years, and he’s had three in the past two months. He declared this one was the best.

The young woman making the date shakes makes them three at a time, and she never stops making them.

I had the quintessential drink for the store: a date shake. It was very good. The shake wasn’t saturated with dates and had just a hint of the date flavor until I got to the bottom where most of the date pieces had settled. Then it was very datey tasting–perfect for someone like me who likes dates.

Of course, I had to Google to learn all about dates…

From How to Grow Dates

Dates are grown on a date palm tree. Date palms are either male or female, and you will need one of each in order to have any fruit.

Date palms are not pollinated by insects or birds, but by the wind. With only a few trees, you are taking a risk that nothing will pollinate and therefore will produce no fruit. That means part of your annual gardening routine will have to be hand-pollinating your date trees.

Early each year, the male trees will produce sheaths of pollen. You will have to collect it (it’s just a fine powder) and then dust it over the female flowers once your female trees are in bloom. A sheath weighs about ten pounds.

The female flowers are quite pretty.

Here’s a bunch of dates that are ripening.

As the dates ripen, they are often covered with muslin to protect them from insects and birds. The dates are heavy, so the bags are stuck between the fronds to help hold the weight.

After seeing how labor intensive it is to grow dates, I now understand why they are so expensive!