Palmeros harvest medjool dates by hand by leaping into the crown of a tree “full of thorns sharp enough to puncture a tire—or, say, a human limb.” For Offrange, Ashley Stimpson introduces us to the workers who carry on a proud, 6,000-year-old farming tradition that’s in danger of dying out, just as date sales take off in the United States. (Photos by Siri Kaur.)

As far as harrowing job descriptions go, the palmero is up there with trapeze artist and surgeon. Must like heights, must work well in punishing heat, must feel comfortable yielding lethally sharp hand tools. In addition to brute labor, the job also requires an aptitude for botanical minutiae: the pungency of a ripening spadix, the dusky translucency of a perfectly ready date.

Palmeros spend most of their year in the top of the palm trees, which are dioecious plants, meaning male and female reproductive organs grow on separate trees. While the wind can carry pollen from tree to tree, it results in an unpredictable and uneven yield. Around 4000 BC in the Persian Gulf, our ancestors got wise and started cultivating the date palm by hand, kicking off a tradition Medina and Patino still carry out today.

War stories, new colors, and the joy in getting hands on in art and gardening.

Before I read this piece, all I knew about tomatoes was that homegrown tastes infinitely better than store-bought. For Offrange, Mitch Hagney educated me on how tomatoes ripen naturally and unnaturally, and how Big Tomato forces the issue in huge warehouses by pumping in ethylene gas. It might just inspire you to grow your own.

Tomatoes are climacteric fruits, like bananas, avocados, and mangos, which means they can be harvested unripe and complete the process later. Ethylene sends the hormonal signal to ripen. When that process happens naturally, cells near its seeds start producing the gas and it diffuses outward through the fruit. Each cell the gas reaches begins its own production, and the cascade softens the flesh and the tomato turns red from the inside out. That allows the fruit to be picked much greener, shipped far, and then ripened when they’re close to their eater.

To do it artificially isn’t complicated, but it is expensive. Ethylene floods the room at carefully calibrated amounts, and the operator compresses what might take weeks into five days. Sensors log temperature, humidity, and gas concentrations around the clock. The tomato turns red from the outside in.