The palm tree is gone

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Last week a local family's front yard grass, hedge, and tall palm tree were suddenly on fire, from an unknown cause.
In the previous post we wondered if it could be spontaneous combustion, but maybe not.
Yesterday a private garden crew came to cut down the blackened tree.
The chainsaw made quick work out of the upper half of the palm.

Watch how they lifted it over the fence and onto the sidewalk.

Still a little bit of green leaves at the very top of the blackened crown.

Watch and hear how they saw the lower half.

"Timber!"  -- over it goes.

And the second "log" comes out to the sidewalk.

All that's left,  black ashes surrounding a sawdust covered stump of a palm tree that had been growing for decades.

Today our local council's green clean-up crew picked up the wood and swept the sidewalk clean.
And here endeth the lesson.
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(Linking to ABC Wednesday.  Letter M is for motor saw, which is how most European languages call the chainsaw.)
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Spontaneous combustion? -- A palm in flames

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WET is the City Daily Photo topic for today's Theme Day.
We have not much rain and no bodies of water here in my corner of Israel's Negev desert.
But the other day, a hot dry chamsin day, our town suddenly saw a lot of water--not from the sky but from fire hoses!
The crown of a palm tree suddenly burst into flames.
SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION?!  It is a known phenomenon especially in palms.

Soon the whole trunk and the hedge were burning.
Our Meitar Bitachon/Security team (bless them!) were on the scene quickly and rolled out their hoses.

The police and Fire Department arrived too.

Two firemen suited up and went to work.

At the end, our local hoses had themselves to be hosed down to clean the black soot off them.

The now leafless and blackened dead palm will hopefully be cut down soon.
That's a scary thing, trees suddenly bursting into flame for no good reason.
I hope never to see such a thing again.
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See Palm Trees as Fire Hazards, a useful page of advice, photos, and a video link by a California fire department.
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Palms heavy with dates

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It is date season and Meitar's many date palms are getting heavy with fruit. 

See more of our town's tall and short date palm varieties here.
To understand how dates are harvested in big plantations, check out these big machines. 
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Date machines

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My date palm post yesterday reminded me of the AgriTech exhibition in Tel Aviv back in 2012.
 

These "clam shell" platforms are part of big pruning/picking towers.

Enlarge the photo: the posters demonstrate the machines' work.
The biggest model, AF-20,  boasts a working height of about 70 ft (21.5 meters) and a load capacity of 1,500 lb (700 kg)!

Here is how the Israeli manufacturer, Afron, describes it:

The Afron family of pruning / picking towers include models specifically designed for date trees.  Afron date tree models are designed for date trees from 25 feet (7.5 meters) up to 65 feet (20 meters) in height. 
All Afron date tree models include a “clam shell” type operator platform that is designed to encircle the date tree trunk.  This provides full access to the date tree canopy for several workers.  
Not only can Afron date tree models be used for picking and pruning, but also include optional attachments for spraying and mechanical harvesting through the use of a shaker head.
 All functions of the tower can be controlled by a single operator on the operators platform.   

Further technical details are here.

Next time you eat sweet dates, give a thought to the workers who were way up there picking them for you. 

There is also a nice story about Lisa Solomon, the date plantation manager at Kibbutz Ketura in the Arava, in Israel's south.
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(Linking to Our World Tuesday.)
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Let's make a date

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It's that time of year again! 

Here is a very interesting article about just how much work and love goes into raising date palms at Kibbutz Ketura.

See the palm in effervescence in my earlier post.
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Flowering date palm

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Jerusalem's International  YMCA tower.
But even more impressive,  at this season of the year, are the date palm trees in its courtyard.
Enlarge the photo with two clicks and enjoy the view of dates in the making.
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The brave palm tree trimmer

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Promise me you will enlarge this photo (by clicking once, and then once again). 

Isn't this guy awesome?!  He was so brave.
He was up in the crown of a palm tree trimming the fronds and after he climbed down, he agreed to show me those tree-climbing spikes strapped to his legs. 
Awesome, right?
Go on, click on the picture.  Look at that smile! 
How often do you see a man doing a dangerous job but enjoying it and taking pride in good work?!

It must be hard enough to climb and keep your balance even  without the heavy chainsaw hanging from your belt. 
At least here, the man had a cinch holding him to the tree so he would have both hands free to saw.

But while he was coming down, he took off the cinch. 
Oi veh!  I was holding my breath. Please don't fall! 
His two assistants on the ground asked me "Mafchid?" --Does it look scary to you?
Oh yeah.

Actually it was my first time to see a palm tree trimmer.
I had only seen pictures of this in Maryanne's blog, in Egypt, and there the man was cutting with an axe. 
Click on her label "palm" to read all the many ways palm fiber and wood is used in Egypt.

If you enlarge this photo too, you can see all the drooping dead branches that needed to be trimmed. 
The row of stately palm trees there at the entrance to Jerusalem's Hadassah Ein Kerem medical center looked a lot more stately after the trimmer's good treatment.

I thanked him profusely and said "Allah yisa'adek" which I hope is the proper Arabic for what I meant:  May God help you in this challenging work and always keep you safe.
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