https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/e3cae0f3-d867-4b8c-983e-e57e5d15b10d Want to support this channel and help us preserve old films? Visit https://www.patreon.com/PeriscopeFilm Visit our website www.PeriscopeFilm.com This 1970 color installment of the educational "Discovery" program for young people focuses on the operations of a farm growing various types of dates on a grove of date palms located in the Coachella Valley of Southern California (TRT: 22:28). A grove of date palm trees reflected in a pool of water. Title overlay: “The Changing Face of the Desert” (0:08). Animated “Discovery ‘70” opening (0:36). Hosts Virginia Gibson and Bill Owen introduce themselves from the Coachella Valley in Southern California. A pile of rocks sit at the foot of a mountain in the background. Owen holds out a handful of seashells from the Colorado Desert (1:10). Various views of the grove or “garden” of date palms (1:50). Members of the Tellas Codicas family of date growers: A father, mother, and three girls with a family dog tour their farm (2:25). Mr. Codicas opens an irrigation valve, water flows forth (2:58). Heavy agricultural machinery is used to level and till rural fields nearby. Irrigation canals in a field being leached. A hand shows alkali and salt in the soil (3:20). The Coachella branch of the All-American Canal extends into the horizon, with lens flare and blue skies (4:11). A sub-canal branch. A “zanjero” or “ditch rider” opens a valve on an irrigation control tower (4:45). The hosts are reflected in canal water (5:25). Female palms with bunches of fruit and male date palms are compared (5:53). The hosts tour the thriving date palm grove on foot. The camera tilts up to convey the scale of the towering plants (6:15). The pollen-bearing flowers of a male date palm. Pollen is brushed with a blade and collected by hand (7:41). Fertilized flower clusters are tied to the lower fronts of a palm by a farm worker (8:21). A man in a hardhat uses an axe to prune leaves from atop a date palm (8:48). Closeups on the trunk and structure of the plant (9:09). Paper cones protect dates hanging from a palm (9:45). Mr. Codicas, seated on an outdoor lounge chair, speaks about the history of the date-growing and harvesting process (10:15). A mechanical vehicle mounted with a boom arm for modern picking. Dates are cut down in bunches, and a boom operator lowers the basket. A mechanical shaker sorts ripe dates (11:20). More coverage of the garden and its caretaker (12:37). Closeup and zoom out from deglet nour dates exposed to the sun (13:31). Barhi date palms and their delicate fruit are compared and contrasted (14:05). Medjool dates show a larger, longer shape. A child helps two farmers sort dates (14:27). Roy W. Nixon, a consultant to the U.S. Dept. of Agricultural specializing in dates, speaks (14:57). Crates of dates. Inside a processing plant. Women sort dates on a conveyor belt (15:12). A pitting machine drops pitted dates onto a conveyor belt below. A packaging machine bags dates (16:42). In a food lab, a Dept. of Agricultural inspector checks dates for moisture content and size (17:19). The hosts speak, while workers labor in the background. Female palm offshoots in are pointed out (17:34). A sledgehammer is used to separate an offshoot from a tree with a chisel. The heart of the palm in closeup (18:32). The offshoot is replanted and watered (19:47). The hosts in a desert clearing (20:28). Book recommendations are offered: “American Desert Animals, Southwest Desert Wonderland, Elf Owl” (21:16). End credits (21:38). This episode of Discovery ‘70 was written by Mary Dornheim and produced by Jules Power in association with ABC News. Production assistance and promotional consideration was provided by the California Date Administrative Committee. Motion picture films don't last forever; many have already been lost or destroyed. We collect, scan and preserve 35mm, 16mm and 8mm movies -- including home movies, industrial films, and other non-fiction. If you have films you'd like to have scanned or donate to Periscope Film, we'd love to hear from you. Contact us via the link below. This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZZ-7T1c2FE Mirrored from Periscope Film (https://www.youtube.com/@PeriscopeFilm) Sat, 13 Jun 2026 13:16:24 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://peertube.dngr.us https://peertube.dngr.us/lazy-static/avatars/41a6fee9-7f57-42d0-a5fc-5db4f1af2e31.png https://peertube.dngr.us/videos/watch/e3cae0f3-d867-4b8c-983e-e57e5d15b10d All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://peertube.dngr.us/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.