China Ranch Date Farm

China Ranch is still open, but mostly through our service window. We can only allow one person or couple inside the store at a time, so please ask at the window and wait your turn to come in. And also, wear a mask! Ordering online or by phone is the safest option, of course!

Our pond cleanup event was a great success! Spirits were high, the sun was hot, and much digging was done! Thank you to all the volunteers who came out and worked so hard to clear the reservoir. We really couldn’t have done it without you!

We are full to our capacity for the volunteer cleanup event. A lot of people seemed to miss our original post about this to the event page so we wanted to do a post about this to our main page. Thank you everybody who signed up. We will be in touch soon with details. If you did not email us in advance and get a response back please do not show up with a bunch of people. We really need to keep our numbers controlled for Covid safety. The Ranch will still be open to the public and you are still welcome to visit any day of the week. Again thank you to everybody who contacted us and offered your help.

Check our some of our products newly available on our website in the Gift Shop section. We just re-stocked our honey !! Also try Mesquite Flour or Anasazi Beans! @ China Ranch Date Farm

Here they come. These black beauty dates will turn bright red and then jet black in about a month when they ripen. The honey dates will turn golden yellow and then light brown in their ripe stage. Both varieties are delicious! We are working hard to get all of these bundles wrapped in their protective bags before the birds take an interest in them.

Repost of a pic of the China Ranch badlands area from our friend @durancastro Gorgeous, but deadly hot right now at 116 - come enjoy them this Fall!

A nice photo of the comet currently streaking by the planet about 60 million miles out there. it's under the tree on the right side. This photo was taken by Mike Polda, a former student of mine who has become a good friend. He still doesn't listen to me.

Good help is hard to find, this guy gets paid to stand around all day! Maybe we pay him in horseflies, but horseflies ain’t cheap in this economy!

I've just returned from our irrigation pond, which is extremely low this time of year. The shallow water is attracting all kinds of hunters going after the frogs, crayfish, and the small fish. Today I've seen a mother coyote and pup, their scat is full of crawfish shells. And what is probably a family of 4 Blue herons, a flock of 7 ibis's, a shrieking redtail hawk, and a small flock of ducks. At dusk the bats and swallows will come in to harvest the insects on the water's surface. 110 here right now, but even in this heat the word is out about the easy pickings at the china ranch pond. Nature finds a way!

You can now purchase these date products on our website!! China Ranch Date Paste (for baking or making your own shakes at home), Date Nibs rolled in oat flour, and Fancy Candy - a perfect gift! Get some today!! @ China Ranch Date Farm

LOOK who's back in town/the China Ranch garage!!! Our favorite lizard celebrity, GRANOLA!!! We are SO happy to see him and so glad he wasn't eaten by the snake that lives nearby or the heron that was hunting in Granola's rocky lair!

New product alert !!! Our website is now stocked with all of our new date products! Photos 1&2 show our China Ranch Date Syrup/Silan (our dates cooked down to a syrup with pulp removed), photos 3&4 are Organic Date Sugar (not our dates since it requires a large machine to dehydrate and crush the dates to a sugar with fiber intact), photos 5&6 show our Desert Sunrise Granola (sweetened with our date syrup), and the last photo is The Olde Spanish Trail Mix, featuring China Ranch Dates! Call or go online to order some today!! www.chinaranch.com or (760)852-4415 #datesyrup #silan #organicdates #datesugar #organicdatesugar #granola #trailmix #theoldspanishtrail #chinaranch #chinaranchdates @ China Ranch Date Farm

Native Tribes such as Western Shoshone and Paiute lived and foraged off of the land at China Ranch. Spanish traders also passed through here on the Old Spanish Trail on their way to Santa Fe. The first person known to cultivate these fields was a Chinese Man in the late 1800's from which China Ranch gets its name. Originally known as The Chinaman's Ranch, he grew vegetables to sell to the miners in the nearby area, providing the only fresh food for the camps. The Chinese Excl...usion Act of 1882 would have prevented him from having any legal claim to the land. There is much speculation about whether he was run off at gunpoint, given money in trade for the land, or was met with foul play, but we know there is a deed from 1900 with an X signed on it saying the land now belonged to two white men, Morrison & Walsh. The ranch changed hands several more times, with different crops and livestock being cultivated before the Brown family started farming dates here in the late 1980s. We would like to acknowledge the history of this land. People of all colors, beliefs, and backgrounds are welcome and encouraged to visit and enjoy the beauty of China Ranch. See more

Friends; Ramadan begins on April 23, and China Ranch has a nice selection of dates and date products for Ramadan gifts. Check out our website at china ranch.com for the current selection.

OUR PHONE LINES ARE OPEN AGAIN AND WE ARE READY TO TAKE YOUR ORDERS!!!!

Come sample our healthy new DATE SMOOTHIE (if you live close by), and, while you’re here, go for a hike to witness some freshly opened blooms! We are still open in a limited capacity with a service window where you can order any of our food or gift items, and we are sanitizing regularly. We’re pretty used to social distancing out here at China Ranch. You likely won’t see another person on the hiking trail. And please order online if you would like dates or baked goods sent in the mail. @ China Ranch Date Farm

We are still open in a limited capacity here at China Ranch. Farms and Farmstands qualify as essential businesses. The gift store is closed, but you can still buy Dates, Shakes, Smoothies, Baked Goods, and Canned Goods at the window. Or on the phone or online. Please no large groups and respect the 6 foot social distancing guidelines. Hiking our trails is still a safe and gorgeous pastime. @ China Ranch Date Farm

To all our customers: We encourage everyone to stay home during the coming weeks. China Ranch will be open in a limited capacity through the weekend, operating as a farm stand (service window only). The gift shop will be closed but dates, baked goods, and other products will still be available at the window. Farms and food security have an important role to play in the months ahead and our Date Farm will attempt to stay open for the time being. We encourage folks to stay home... and order our date products online. We can ship anything we sell in the store (except shakes), so if you don’t find what you want on our website, don’t hesitate to email or call us. [email protected] or (760)852-4415. If you do come down, please do not come in large groups and please respect the 6 foot social distancing rule. We are also accepting Donations to help keep the farm going. See more

WOW!!! We made it into 2 Los Angeles Times articles in 1 month! We’re slow to post this, but so grateful.. Come see us at China Ranch!!!

New Year, New Products, New MENU!! China Ranch now offering a healthy, plant-based alternative to our classic ice-cream-laden Date Shake! Come try our new Date Smoothie!! And sample our Date Syrup Cold Brew while you’re at it!!

Thanks @bobhowells and @latimes for this fantastic write up of Tecopa’s burgeoning food scene in this Sunday’s edition (link below)! Congrats to our fellow Death Valley businesses and friends - make sure you try their food and brews the next time you’re in the area! @steaksandbeer @deathvalleybrewing @tecopabrewingcompany @delightshotspringsresort @tecopahotsprings @amargosacafe @ Tecopa, California https://www.latimes.com//tecopa-foodie-haven-hiking-hot-sp

Dinosaurs , Camels and Snakes , OH MY!! Christmas is here at China Ranch, but so are the critters! Can’t think of the perfect gift ? Come on down to China Ranch, where we have something for EVERYONE!! And be sure to place your delicious date-filled web/phone orders - they should still arrive before Christmas if you order this week! @ China Ranch Date Farm

We gotsa lotsa dates! a couple of days of beautiful weather have allowed us to bring in hundreds of crates of beautiful fruit, and more coming in daily. These are being sorted, graded and packed daily into the Christmas gift packs and samplers, about as fresh as they can be. Check out the selection of gift packs as well as new products on our website. A very busy time of year for us. The weather is fine, so if you are within visiting distance you can always swing by for a hike, a shake, or just to enjoy the ambiance.

Are you ready for the holidays? Because we are! China Ranch dates or baked items make the perfect gift ! Get your order in today at Chinaranch.com or you can order our new products like Date Syrup, Date Sugar, Desert Sunrise Granola, Old Spanish Trail Mix or Organic Mesquite Flour over the phone at (760)852-4415 . @ China Ranch Date Farm

The weather is finally clearing for several days and so we will be busy out in the fields, bringing in the dates. In particular, black beauties and gourmet varieties this week. And, lots of packing to be done in the sorting room, the mail; orders are rolling in daily. Remember, if you would like to send gift packs to family or friends for the holidays either give us a call or visit the website. As a side note, these rains raise the possibility of a green spring...

We have a wonderful selection of dates right now, as well as gift pack combos which make very nice holiday treats for both personal or corporate gifts. You can order on our website, call the gift shop at 760 852-4415, or swing on by the ranch and browse for other goodies as well. Merry Christmas!

At China Ranch, a great date is always guaranteed. One of our greatest dates is our exclusive, delicious Gourmet date, which is now AVAILABLE ONLINE!! Get your order in today!

Looking for a date this weekend? We've got some great looking Barhis fresh in from the field! You can only get them in store - they don’t keep well in the mail. Come and get some of this plump, juicy fruit. @ China Ranch Date Farm

Frond Voyage to these 5,500 palm fronds our crew chopped down (last week) to send to Brooklyn for the Jewish High Holy Days of Sukkot. Frond dusk til dawn, they cut, de-thorned, and bundled as their frondships grew with each passing day. With fronds like these, everyone was thinking, "All for frond and frond for all!" as they toiled from dusk til frond.

China Ranch - an idyllic paradise for trucks. Voted in the top 50 best truck resorts in a 2019 edition of Truck’s Digest: A Magazine Exclusively Made for Trucks. If you know a truck that might need a break from the snoozefest of the city, bring ‘em down to China Ranch for a well-deserved vacation! @ China Ranch Date Farm

This morning while irrigating I came upon an ibis, a kingfisher, and a grebe at our pond. It's windy and cool today, summer is over, it feels like fall, and I think our resident blue heron has left for the season. The birds and other wildlife are rearanging themselves, doing what they do to prepare for the winter. Resident store food, migrants move on, or arrve for a few days of rest and feeding. The eternal cycles of nature remind us of what lasts, and what's important, and what is not. It's nice to live in a place where these lessons are laid out in front of us on a daily basis.

If the weather forecast holds, Friday Sept. 27 will be our last day with temps. above 90 degrees. Oh Joy! that's kind of a big deal here for those of us who toil outdoors. So, nights in the 60's, days in the 80's, wonderful desert hiking weather, or just for wandering in the grove while we harvest. The horseflies will be wearing tiny sweaters to protect themselves from the chilly temps, without the high heat they quickly fade away. The desert is calling you, come on out!

The Bombers are almost gone for the season, and Granola savors every last bite!

Our east coast lulav customers have come and gone with their treasures. If anyone in the Las Vegas Jewish community is interested we can supply both lulavs and fronds before the holidays start. Better hurry!

Our good friend Granola has been shy lately - I think he’s embarrassed to be molting.. I’ve tried to convince him that the collar of skin sloughing off his shoulders is tres chic, just like the collar worn by another sexy lizard that appears in artist Carolyn Schmitz’ portrait (her greeting cards of desert animals in hats/getups of their own fashioning are for sale in our gift shop!). Show Granola some love - he definitely needs the self-esteem boost. @desertdada #desertdada #carolynschmitz @ China Ranch Date Farm

Granola finally gets fed!

Patient Granola waits by the door all day for our human toils to end long enough for us to shower him in horseflies.. Will he ever eat again now that harvest has begun and our day planners are brimming with activity? Stay tuned.. @ China Ranch Date Farm

Granola’s waitin’ for a treat.

If any of our Jewish friends out there need lulavs for the upcoming succott celebration, or leaves to build your hut with, we can supply them. We're supplying hundreds of them to a couple of rabbis on the east coast in the next week or two. contact us for details.

It’s DATE SEASON!! Plump and fresh Medjools, Halawys, and Hyanys are now available online and in store! Or give us a call at 760.852.4415 - more debutante dates to be revealed soon!

One more plant post! Populus Fremontii, The Cottonwood tree. The tree of life for those seeking water and shade in the pioneer times, it is a reliable indicator of flowing surface water or very shallow groundwater. Variations of the cottonwood are common along riparian areas in just about every environment in North America, and this is ours. They are fast growing, get huge, and spontaneously shed large branches in the hot months for no apparent reason, these sometimes come s...ailing down to crush cars and houses that are located under their luxurious shade. In the early spring the unopened buds can be gathered and crushed and put into ointments or linaments and used externally as an anti inflamatory for sore joints, arthritis, etc. The bark of some varieties can also be boiled to make an astringent tea that will dry up runny noses and stuffy sinuses. Anyone remember that old song " Cool, clear, water " by a singing cowboy group called the Reinsmen from the early 1960's? I always imagined they were singing about a colltonwood tree. See more

Friends; The heat has finally broken, mercifully! We have started harvesting and now have medjools, black hyany dates, and halawys, and excellent Iraqi variety. Come on by the ranch or check our website for orders, or give us a call at 760 852-4415.

Here they come! While we are scrambling to finish bagging the date bundles we are running across trees with early ripening fruit, so we are harvesting that at the same time. Although they are a little too soft to ship, these are now available at our gift shop. They are soft, moist,very sweet and delicious! And, more good news; Saturday night is supposed to be the big cool down, nights dippping into the 60's, high on Sunday only 100, that's a big deal for us! Come on down and sample some of these wonderful dates, fresh off of the trees.

More Granola! For all you 'Nola-heads out there!

Granola gettin' what's his.

Meet the newest member of the China Ranch Family, GRANOLA the lizard!! We found this little guy wanting to hang out with us while we worked in the garage. Pretty quickly he started jumping at the large horseflies that are always trying to eat us this time of year, so we started feeding him a steady diet of Tecopa Bombers. Granola is a male Yellow Backed Spiny Lizard who will go into hibernation in October. We're doing our best to fatten him up before then..

Coyote poop! As is well known, coyotes are probably more omnivorous like bears than true carnivores, like wolves. Around here they will eat almost anything; animals, plants, birds, bugs, carrion, and including fifi the poodle and fluffy the cat, if they get the opportunity. This particular sample had a couple of feathers, screwbean mesquite pods, date pits, and a few small bone shards. I'm quite certain that without these guys we would be up to our kneecaps in rodents around here, they are serving a purpose and doing the job eons of evolution have designed them for. Welcome coyotes, just don't eat me. !

Summer is taking its' last swipe at us this week, we've had a string of days hitting 110 degrees. Hard to work in, but hopefully making the fruit nice and sweet. The rule of thumb for good dates is at least 30 days above 100 degrees, preferably in a dry climate. I think we hit that threshold sometime in June...

These large Egyptian Hyany variety dates are now fully in the red khalal stage. It won't be long now before they begin to soften and sweeten and turn jet black, their final ripe color. These are very moist and plump and full of sugar when ripe, so if they aren't refrigerated soon after harvest they can ferment. Well, maybe not a bad thing... we've been told that in Egypt they are eaten immediately, they are a seasonal treat. Other varieties, like te Algerian deglet noors or Iraqi dayris are very dry when harvested and can be stored literally for years. Before refrigeration these would have been very important as a stored food source for the winter.

Young date palms, Phoenix dactylifera ,soaking in the stream before they head off to their new home in Arizona. Date palms produce clone trees, or offshoots, which can be cleaved from the parent trees and rooted and grown. Selling these offshoots helps pay the bills during the hot summer months when visitation drops off considerably. This order of over 50 trees will help keep us going until the first fruit ripens in a few weeks.

Mint! This delightful herb comes up at several locations along willow creek on China Ranch. A fun book about this region written in the 1950's says anecdotely that the mint was planted by the original Chinese farmer here in the 1890's. The author was sipping bourbon at the time topped with sprigs of the freshly picked mint, a mint julip, while chatting on the porch with the occupant of the old ranch house here at that time. We have no idea if this tale about the mint is true or not, but it's a great story, so let's just go with it...

Yerba Mansa, a medicinal plant that is common in wet or swampy places with heavy, clay soils in ther southwest. Native groups in the region used it as medicine to treat surface wounds, cuts, pimples, etc. If you crush the leaves they admit a strong but not unpleasant odor of camphor, like campho phenique, if you are familiar with that product. At certain specific times of year the roots can also be used in internal formulations, but only a trained person should attempt this. In the spring it puts out a lovely, small white flower on a long stem; old timers called it swamp lily. The desert is full of surprises, not the sterile waste land as sometimes perceived. Get out there and explore!

about 9 - 12 millon years ago the china ranch basin was a large fresh water lake. The dramatic, buff colored hills we drive through to get to the ranch are the eroded sediments that had settled at the bottom of this lake. Large mammals grazed around the edges of the lake in the marshy areas, including the extinct camel species that left these foot prints in what was then a muddy shoreline. When the weather cools you can make such discoveries on your own by preparing for a hike in the mysterious canyon lands around the ranch. A nice date shake can be your reward!

Cucurbita palmata, the coyote melon. These fast growing vines come up naturally in sandy washes and produce big, beautiful, bright orange flowers. These eventually give rise to the baseball sized gourds you can see here. Though not toxic they are incredibly bitter. When dried they become tan and lightweight, and local artists sometime paint scenes on them as decorative items, you can see some in our gift shop. They also make excellent missiles to hurl at the neighbors cat or errant children. lightweight and brittle, impact results in a harmless but very satisfying explosion of seeds and chaf. It's what 10 year old desert kids do...

Datura Metaloides, or Jimson weed. In the early morning these beautiful white flowers are fully open, but during the hot day light hours they close up. The plant produces three different toxic alkaloids, which are poisonous and potentially fatal. When rubbed or crushed the leaves are incredibly stinky. There arer many stories of people poisoning themselves experimenting with this plant. beautiful to look at, but not to be ingested!

Late summer and the mesquite beans are ripe. These tough, fibrous beans were a staple food for the native people of this region. Wildlife also eat them, especially when they have been broken up a bit to allow the birds and smaller animals to get to the seeds. We often see the undigested seeds in coyote scat; the young animals in particular who may not be proficient hunters probably get by on these until their skills improve. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in using these as a human food source, but it takes a tough machine to turn these into flour! It has a distinct aroma and flavor with a mild sweetness. We use it as an ingredient in our new granola and the flour itself will be on the shelves and on our website this coming fall!

These yummy medjool dates are turning from green to yellow, into what is known as the khalal stage. The internal chemistry brgins to change and the dates transform from being hard and astringint to soft and sweet. These medjools will turn cinnamon brown and become the big luscious fruit our customers love probably about mid September. Time to wrap these up and protect them from the birds and coyotes. Lots of cotote puppies this year, we've counted at least 6. They are no trouble, they go about their business and we go about ours. They do eat some of the literal low hanging fruit, we just consider it a wild life tax.

Our newest field next to China Ranch road has come into good production this year, after a thorough cleaning and being reclaimed from the weeds. The field consists of plantings of Gourmet, Black Beauty, and Honey varieties, about 160 trees total. These short trees will be easy to work for a few more years!.

This week we've started wrapping the dates in the protective bags as they change colors and transition into the Khalal stage of development. The mesh bags protect against bird predation, sunburn on the fruit skin, and seem to help the bundles ripen more evenly. Unending work in the early morning hours to beat the heat and the horseflies. If you are interested in the crunchy yellow barhi dates they usually are ready beginning about the end of August. Stay tuned...

The recent weeks of sizzling weather have stimulated the next phase of fruit development. These Black Beauty dates are turning deep purple now as they continue to grow. they will turn bright red, then finally black as they ripen and fill with sugar. These are usually fully ripe about the first of October. The eternal cycle continues...

The recent swath of monsoonal clouds have been providing us with lovely sunsets and interesting evening light. These photos were taken by Mathieu, a volunteer worker visiting us from Paris for a couple of weeks. This past Thursday it was hotter in Paris than it was at China Ranch! Evenings like these make the sweltering humidity almost worth it...

Nothin’ to do when it’s this hot but make date babies.

One of our hidden little fantasy spots, beautiful to see this time of year. It's about 112 or more outside right now... date shake weather!

The 2019 crop is coming along nicely! One common misconception is that date palms have to be old and large before they bear fruit. Not so; this honey date tree is about 6 ft. tall, and if all goes well this will become about 200 lbs. of delicious ripened fruit by about October. We should have the earliest dates, including yellow barhis right around the first of September. It's roasting hot here right now, but the dates love it.

Come for the DATE SHAKE, stay for the EARTHQUAKE!!! Open 9-5 every day. #earthquake #dateshake #deathvalley

This grabby gang of devilish Dinos took off with the rest of our Gourmet date varieties! The good news is we still have Honeys, China Ranch Pinks, Deglets and Dayris for a while longer. Don’t let any rapacious raptors, tricky T-Rex , possessive pachycephalosauri or treacherous triceratops get their grubby hands on YOUR DATES! Order today!!! @ China Ranch Date Farm & Bakery

Some of the many beautiful things you can see on a trip to China Ranch. The first one is out in our badlands, the second is by the waterfall off the Amargosa River Trail. Bring water and tell a friend where you’ll be - it’s hot and dry out here! @ Amargosa River Canyon

Quick! Medjools are almost gone! Be sure to get your order in before this gang of roving dinos absconds with the last Medjools of the season! Link in bio. I hear they’re coming for our China Ranch Gourmets next! @ China Ranch Date Farm & Bakery