Farm Smart Valentines "Date" Night

Wednesday night we spent our Valentine's in the fields of Imperial Valley on the Farm Smart "date" Night tour and dinner on the farm.  Farm Smart is an educational outreach program of the Desert Research and Extension Center located in Holtville, California.  The program began in 2001 and continues to grow and has already educated 139,000 people, mainly K-12 school aged children on how food is produced and the commodities grown in the Imperial Valley.  They have tours on a constant basis but Wednesday night was their first ever "date" night dinner on the farm.

One we arrived at 3:30 pm in Holtville (about 15 minutes east from where we are staying in El Centro) Scott checked us in.  While we waited for everyone on the tour to arrive, they had a bunch of snacks for us to choose from - tea, fruits of apples, bananas and tangerines, cookies, fruit snacks and cheese & crackers.  We sat and chatted while waiting for the whole group to assemble by 4 pm.  The people who were catered to for this event was mainly the RVers in Yuma and El Centro.  The day was SUPER cold.  Probably the coldest day of all the days since we've been in El Centro with a high of 64 degrees!  We brought our sweatshirts (and mine had mittens in them), but they weren't quite warm enough.  It even rained while we were on the tour - a rare occurrence in the Imperial Valley.  Most years they are lucky to get 2 inches of rain and so it was interesting it would rain on our day.  I also spent time checking out the buildings, taking some photos of the mini gardens and really liked the hanging water bottle garden.

Once everyone arrived, we had a cute demonstration of a garden salad made with herbs, cauliflower and spices topped with cheese.  A man from the table next to us was the gal's assistant and he got to keep his apron.  I really loved the lady's herb garden tin containers below.  What a fun way to have a little herbs in the RV or at home.

After the demo we all loaded up on the two hay wagons and started our tour to the 255-acre farm.  During the tour, we learned all about how water is brought to the Imperial Valley desert areas from the Colorado River.  We also learned that cattle is the main sustainable commodity of the valley followed by main kinds of vegetables.  Farmers from North Dakota, South Dakota, and Canada as well as sheep ranchers from Utah bring their crops and animals to the Imperial Valley to keep growing and harvesting.  Sheep are used to clean up the row of remaining veggies and stems so a new crop can be grown.  Farmers from the cold northern states and Canada come and experiment with the crops during the warm winter months in the valley.  Every year, the commodities change a bit due to what they grow from year to year.  The gardens below is where we did our picking after the tour.

As we continued on the tour, we also saw the holstein cow farm that is also on the property.  The milk from the cows is used for cheese and then the cows are eventually butchered for beef.

One interesting fact is that the farm is residence to the burrowing owl.  At one time, there were canals of water on the property that were filled in and after the fact, they realized that the burrowing owl had his habitat there so they made a large container with a large plastic pipe, dug and put it underground and added a large cross so the owls could land on the cross and then see the burrow underneath.  Other burrowing owls were located along the north perimeter of the property, next to a farm who grows the lettuce for McDonald's.  They are the cutest little owls.  My photo is blurry...we were driving fast and the wagon was bumpy.

As we progressed on the tour and stopped at each location, many people in the wagons would win some cute prizes.  But, all too soon, daylight hours were drawing upon us and we still had some veggie harvesting to do.  Each participant was given a large bag with a bottled water at registration for this part of the event.  They stopped the tour early and we headed over to pick the harvest that was available this time of year.  I ran over to pick carrots and turnips while Scott ran to the beets, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce and radishes.  We probably harvested about 50 pounds of vegetables that we got to take home as part of the tour.  It's amazing how much food the Imperial Valley makes that can feed the world.  The totals were astounding!

Finally, after this was done, the wagons took us over to our cars where we could load up our treasures in our vehicles and then we continued over to the dinner portion of the night.  We got back to the picnic tables that fortunately had a very large lighted tent over them.  Students from the local high school involved in 4-H and culinary arts were our volunteer servers.  We first has appetizers consisting of orange date shakes (date shakes are a popular thing in the Imperial Valley!), stuff jalapeño dates, cheese-filled dates, bacon-wrapped dates, date tarts, beet hummus with crackers, etc.  I think the bacon-wrapped dates were outstanding.  Who would have thought to put the two together, but it works!  Those were the first to go!

After the appetizers and little amuse bouche hors d'oeuvres, the main course was served on the opposite side of the appetizers.  The dinner portion consisted of Tri-tip steak or chicken (or both), creamy potatoes, green beans, green salad with tomatoes, corn or white muffin and date shakes were still in the making.

About the time we were finished eating dinner, a man from the Imperial Date Gardens of the Bard Valley came and made a presentation to us all about dates and how they grow, are harvested and packaged.  Check out the link above to order those beautiful Medjool dates online.  They are so yummy!  Get the chocolate covered!

Apparently, in 1927, there was an infection of all the date trees and they lost the entire crop.  21 date palms were sent from the middle east.  9 survived and because of those 9 palms, there now thousand of date palms growing (incidentally, now feeding the entire world).  Dates are shipped back to the middle east because at one point, they lost all their date trees as well.  So, those trees feed the world!  Scott and I drove through the Bard Valley a couple months ago when we went to Joshua Tree and the Salton Sea.  They palms are impressive!  One male palm can fertilize between 25-40 female palms each producing fruit.  The thorns on the trees can be about 5" long and will take off your fingers, so they use a curved sickle-type knife to removed them.  Bags are then used to cover the immature dates until harvest time where they removed the ones ready to be harvested and let the others mature until they are ready to harvest.  I think there are about 50 pounds of dates that comes from one pod area.  Once dates are harvested, they are frozen for 9 days since they don't use any pesticides on their palms to kill and bacteria before shipping.

Once his interesting and informative presentation was over for our "date" night, it was time for the raffle.  I'm sure everyone won something during the raffle.  Desert Trails gave away two 18-hole golf excursions with golf cart.  We won one of those by default and we also won a gardening glove with alfalfa seeds to grow and sprout for salads or sandwiches and also (my personal favorite and what I hoped to win) a carton of Medjool dates!!  Yippee!! 

We had such a fun time and despite the cold and wind, it was a fun night to celebrated Valentines day and "date" night.  It was so cool that night we just left the produce in the car, but the next morning we spread out our free harvest.  We made a delicious stew with the food plus an onion we dehydrated before we left on our trip and some sausage.  So yummy!  We had so much we even gave away from cabbage, carrots and turnips to our neighbors on both sides of us and across the road.