Field Trip: Coachella Valley Date Farm

Hi friends and welcome to the first installment of Southern California field trips. Come along with me every 90 days to visit growers and producers of California Cuisine ingredients. You’ll enjoy the scenery, the people, and, of course, the sunshine!

Today’s visit takes us to Southern California’s Coachella Valley, home to nine desert cities including Palm Springs, the Coachella music festival, beautiful golf courses, and acres of citrus and date farms.

These field trips are a delicious perk of being a paid subscriber and I’m so glad you are here!

California Desert

Have you ever been to a desert? If not, you may not know how very hot it gets. The temperature in the greater Palm Springs area in the summer averages between 100 F to 110 F (38 C to 43 C). I’ve been there before when the temperature hit 120 F/49 C. Not surprisingly, the rubber and plastic things inside my car went all soft and melty while the vehicle sat in the sun.

The SoCal desert is also home to the San Gorgonio Pass, which runs between two large mountain ranges, the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains. The heat of the desert creates low pressure systems that attract wind, and this space between the mountains funnels that wind through the valley.

Driving through the desert, a common sight is acres of modern windmills, or wind turbines. These turbines capture energy from the wind and turn it into electricity to power nearby cities. These desert wind farms are the largest in the United States. I think they look like aliens!

The sunny climate of Coachella Valley makes it the perfect place to grow dates. Date palms thrive in hot and dry growing conditions with very little rainfall. California regularly goes through seasons of drought with little to no rain, sometimes lasting over six months to a year. These palms do require some groundwater, however, which is why you see irrigation pipes in the orchards.

Southern California is the biggest grower of dates in the U.S., producing nearly 60,000 tons yearly. A distant second is Arizona, followed by Florida, Nevada, and Texas.