This week, I’ve been working in the date plantation. The date plantation is very close to the border to Jordan. It takes about 20 minutes by car to go from Ne’ot Semadar to the plantation:
The date palms are typically between 4 and 15 meters tall, so we use a ramp to get up to the dates. The dates aren’t ready for harvest yet, and they won’t be until late August or early September. So right now we’re thinning the date bunches so that the ones we leave on the tree will grow big and sweet.
Here’s my fellow volunteer Souf manning the controls of the ramp. The ramp is specially designed to handle date palms, and can reach up to 18 meters. The date palms grow by half a metre per year, so after 40 years they’ll be too big for the ramp. The plantation is only around 25 years old, so there’s plenty of time left.
This photo gives a better idea of the size of the date palms, as well as of the plantation as a whole.
