Medjool dates, a Middle Eastern delicacy It is 7am in mid-September and it is already 25C as the harvest comes to an end at Ketura. Each palm yields 120-180kg of dates two or three times a year between July and November, and all the picking is done by hand, with the kibbutz taking on an extra 35 workers during the harvest times. And given the extreme climate - summer temperatures can reach 46C, and annual rainfall is less than an inch - date palms need significant irrigation. "We give each tree 1,000 litres at a time," Lisa Solomon, the plantation manager, says. In the summer it's every day, then we go down to every other day, until winter, when it's every four days. To reach the dates huge picker trucks are used to elevate workers right into the centre of the trees, a terrifying 65ft above the ground; in many parts of north Africa workers still climb the date palms using ropes. "We have about 10,000 trees here, which is why we don't always get to them on time," she continues. The work is very inefficient because it takes us so long to get up and so long to get down. The goal is to get moist dates, with no loose skin, but you can't get to all of them when they're perfect. 'An almost biblical scene' (BEN QUINTON) Kibbutz Ketura was founded in 1973 by a group of young Americans. Solomon, who is Jewish and originally from Boston, first visited Ketura in the spring of 1975. "I was 18 and spent three months here on an educational programme," she says. I pretty much fell in love with it. She returned to America to do a degree in plant and soil science but was always determined to return to Israel. In 1979 she moved to Ketura, where she has been ever since. Although date palms were already growing in the area, initially the founders began to grow a most unlikely crop - chrysanthemums - but this proved unprofitable. The first date palms were planted in 1974, and the goal is to plant another 25 acres each year. "In the early years we planted Deglet Noor," Solomon says, "but they have gone out of fashion and become barely profitable, so no one has been planting them any more, which is really sad." Today only a quarter of the Ketura plantation is comprised of Deglet Noor (which are sold locally and for export, but not in Britain); the rest is Medjool. "People prefer the soft, melt-in-the-mouth texture compared with the drier texture," Solomon says. Drier dates have a longer shelf life; wetter dates are more vulnerable to damage. Astonishingly, the entire plantation has been produced from 12 "mother" trees, originally imported from California, six of which remain to this day. American-born Lisa Solomon, the manager of the Ketura plantation (BEN QUINTON) For a date grower there is little downtime, even in winter. "It's a very complicated growing process," Solomon says. We have to go into the trees about 10 times a year to do different things. The upkeep starts in December, when to enable them to work in the trees, workers dethorn each new branch with machetes. The following month the male trees begin to flower (the date palm is dioecious, having separate male and female plants; at Ketura there is one male tree to 30 females). "They flower in tremendously beautiful inflorescences of heavily scented tiny off-white flowers," Solomon says. Each day, workers collect the flower pods and take them to a pollen shed where over a few days they are dried, put through an extractor and filtered to produce a creamy-yellow powder. The process is so time-consuming that date growers trade pollen among themselves at about $200 a kilo. In February, as the female flowers start to open, a blowing machine is used to apply the pollen (which has been mixed with talc) to the flowers, once a week for five weeks. Once the fruit has germinated, the most important work of the year still has to be done - the thinning of the bunches. "This helps us reach our goals in terms of yield per tree and quality and size of dates," Solomon says. Then the branches are tied up for support, and at the last possible moment the dates are wrapped in muslin bags to protect them from birds and insects, and to catch any that ripen early. It is then ready for the harvest. Once the dates have been picked they are sent to a packing house where they go through a heat fumigation process, before being refrigerated at a temperature of -18C. Their high sugar content means that dates freeze well, keeping them exceptionally moist and succulent. Traditionally dates are chilled only to 0C, which means that they have already begun to degrade by the time they hit the supermarket shelves. Dates ready for packaging (BEN QUINTON) Although she loves Medjool dates, Solomon generally eats only one per day. "It is the perfect energiser after a workout," she says, "and I use them in tomato sauces to counteract the acidity instead of adding a pinch of sugar." For her, growing dates is much more than just a job. They are trees that demand respect. They live in these crazy inhospit-able conditions, and we're doing it too. There is a camaraderie that you feel with the date trees. Oriental Medjool date cookies recipe Marzipan-stuffed Medjool dates recipe Medjool date and nut slices recipe Medjool ice cream recipe Medjool dates, £3.50 for 12; £5 for 18; Majestic Medjools, £2.50 for five (Marks and Spencer)