The Grove · p. 32

Between the canal and the dunes.

Amberfrond sits on the river flats at Bard, in the far south-east corner of California, where the Colorado bends towards Yuma. The water comes by canal; the heat comes from everywhere.

Date palms along an irrigation canal with the valley beyond
The irrigation lateral that waters Blocks One to Nine.
Ramón Arvizu in a straw hat at the edge of the grove

The family

The people who know every palm

Ramón Arvizu planted the first eleven offshoots in 1984 on land nobody else wanted, a strip of river silt between the levee and the canal. He added a block a year for nine years and still climbs the oldest of them.

His daughter Inés came home from a food science degree in Davis in 2011 and took over the sorting table, the boxes and this website. She grades every date that leaves the grove and writes the harvest letter each month.

In the busiest weeks of the harvest six neighbours from Winterhaven join us on the platforms. Everyone who picks is paid by the hour, not by the pound, so nobody hurries a date that is not ready.

“We are small on purpose. Forty acres is as many palms as two people can know by name.”

— Inés Arvizu

A year in the grove

Point at a month to read what happens in it.

  1. Jan
    Offshoots cut and replanted
  2. Feb
    Fronds pruned, crowns cleaned
  3. Mar
    Every female palm pollinated
  4. Apr
    Strands thinned by a third
  5. May
    Bunches tied down to the fronds
  6. Jun
    Green khalal, first irrigation run
  7. Jul
    Bunches bagged against birds and rain
  8. Aug
    Fresh Barhi strands cut and shipped
  9. Sep
    Medjool harvest begins, passes one and two
  10. Oct
    Passes three and four, grove visits
  11. Nov
    Last pass, holiday boxes packed
  12. Dec
    Gift boxes ship until the 18th
  • Rest and pruning
  • Work in the crowns
  • Harvest and shipping

Visit

Saturday mornings, in season

From the last Saturday of September to the second Saturday of November we open the packing shed and walk visitors through Block Seven. Bring a hat. Collect your order, taste the passes side by side, and see a palm climbed.

When
Saturdays 8 am to noon, 26 September to 14 November
Walks
9 am and 10:30 am, 45 minutes, free
Where
Levee Road, Bard, California 92222
Getting here
I-8 to the Winterhaven exit, then 9 miles north-east on the levee road; turn right after the canal bridge
Parking
On the gravel by the packing shed; the walk is flat and step-free

Write to the grove

Orders, wholesale, events of twenty boxes or more, or a question about a date. Inés answers every message within two working days.

For an order, include the name it was placed under.