And their tools.
I started climbin, commercially anyway, prunin palms, mostly fans n dates, here in SoCal in 1973.
A total rank 14 year old rookie, that spent almost ten years prunin n removin palms exclusively.
My heroes n mentors in those days were some incredibly tough old men, that were old school and tough as nails.
These palm specialists shunned chainsaws entirely, preferring incredibly sharp hand tools, that could be quickly sharpened on the spot, in the tree with a tethered file.
The oldest guy impressed impressed me the most, despite only prunin fan palms n nothin else, Washingtonian Robusta's only. What made him so awe inspiring's that he did it all getting about on a ten speed bike, using only Dexter carpet knives to prune them, from beneath the skirt canopy, peeling the entire frond and base collar off, with carpet knives in each hand. No cleanup, just a saddle, lanyard, gaffs and bag of knives n files to haul around! Never had the nerve to introduce meself to him, but quickly adopted his use of itty bitty lightweight knives in palms to prune n peel them into picture perfect shape.
However it's the date palms that are toughest to deal with old school style, using a modified Coa De Jima tequila harvesting tool. Rich Magargal taught me a lot about old school date palm balling and slicking.
Jemco
I started climbin, commercially anyway, prunin palms, mostly fans n dates, here in SoCal in 1973.
A total rank 14 year old rookie, that spent almost ten years prunin n removin palms exclusively.
My heroes n mentors in those days were some incredibly tough old men, that were old school and tough as nails.
These palm specialists shunned chainsaws entirely, preferring incredibly sharp hand tools, that could be quickly sharpened on the spot, in the tree with a tethered file.
The oldest guy impressed impressed me the most, despite only prunin fan palms n nothin else, Washingtonian Robusta's only. What made him so awe inspiring's that he did it all getting about on a ten speed bike, using only Dexter carpet knives to prune them, from beneath the skirt canopy, peeling the entire frond and base collar off, with carpet knives in each hand. No cleanup, just a saddle, lanyard, gaffs and bag of knives n files to haul around! Never had the nerve to introduce meself to him, but quickly adopted his use of itty bitty lightweight knives in palms to prune n peel them into picture perfect shape.
However it's the date palms that are toughest to deal with old school style, using a modified Coa De Jima tequila harvesting tool. Rich Magargal taught me a lot about old school date palm balling and slicking.
Jemco
