Happy in Hainesport: Shields Date Garden, Indio, California

Kids growing up in the 1960's saw all sorts of dried fruit delicacies at Christmastime. Some far away friend used to send figs and dates to my mother. Mom got to eat the whole gift herself because we kids thought the dates had a weird, soft texture, and we wanted our figs wrapped up in a cakey shell. Fast forward fifty plus years. I decided I like dates. I can thank Shields Date Garden for that.

Dates grow on date palm trees, and date palm trees grow in oases. If you are lost in the desert and you see a palm tree, there will be water by those trees. Date palms need lots of water at the roots and very hot, very dry air above in order to produce fruit. The U.S. Department of Agriculture started a project to grow dates in the Cochella Valley in the 1890's. The desert air and underground springs made for perfect conditions. Floyd and Bess Shields started farming dates in 1924.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shields_Date_Gardens
You can see ladders attached to the trees. Dates are picked by hand. When the tree grows, more lengths of ladder are added,

Not Yet Ripe.
When the tree flowers, people (not nature) pollinate the blossoms. Natural pollination is haphazard and will produce a thin crop. With a little help from humans, thick bunches of dates will grow, so thick that the bunches will be thinned out. After thinning, the remaining fruit will be very high quality. Dates might be the earliest crop cultivated by man. Evidence that humans manipulated date palms goes back to 6000 or 7000 BCE.

Ripe Dates

These spines make harvesting a bit dangerous.

This building contains the store, the soda fountain where you can order date ice cream or a date shake, and a theater where you can watch a movie about dates called "Romance and Sex Life of the Date."

This 50's era sign still stands. Today the Shields Date Garden belongs to the Jewel Date Company. They run the operation just the same as Mr. Shields did.

The Soda Fountain
There is a full service restaurant behind the store and fountain.

The Dates
There are many varieties for sale. The "Blonde" and "Brunette" varieties were developed by Mr. Shields and are grown only at this location.

Mike, Surveying the Free Samples

Floyd Shields knew that sex sells. Bill a dry horticulture lecture about dates as soft core porn, and people will flock to it.

Shopping at the store is free. Entering the garden and roaming among the date palms costs a few bucks. Mike and I can't remember if the admission price was $3.00 or $5.00 per person. If you eat at the restaurant (which we did), admission is free.
We were surprised to see the garden contained 23 statues depicting the life of Christ in 14 scenes. Because of the statues (and the figures of the cross that were worked into lamp posts and sidewalks), I developed a little bit of a negative attitude about charging admission. The statues were more the story than the date palms. It wouldn't surprise me if a Jew, a Muslim, or an atheist requested a refund. In my opinion, there shouldn't have been an entry fee. Shouldn't celebrating the good news be something Christians do for free? The Shields website explains that the life of Christ statues are the garden's centerpiece, but we did not consult the site before our visit. The website does not mention the entry fee.
https://www.shieldsdategarden.com/shields_dates_the_garden.aspx
Later I researched the sculptures, trying to learn about the artist. The artist remains a mystery, but I found out that the statues came to Shields Date Garden by way of a 1991 Canadian scandal. William Vander Zalm, a disgraced politician from British Columbia, donated the statues to Shields in 2011. The figures originally stood in British Columbia in a place called Fantasy Gardens which Vander Zalm owned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Gardens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Vander_Zalm

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=b38bd8fe-0c54-4b5d-8cfb-f0a35c36cec6

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/vander-zalm-describes-career-killing-envelope-of-cash-amid-lawsuit/article543238/

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Former+premier+Bill+Vander+Zalm+arrives+court+with+wife+Lillian+Wednesday+Vander+Zalm+trial+libel+against+judge+former+conflict+interest+commissioner+Hughes+over+statements+autobiography/6089483/story.html