Woo hoo!! Crispy greens! We will have salad through the end of May. So we will be seeing you on Saturdays only, 10am – 12 noon through the end of this month. After that we will announce ‘irregular’ pop-up farmstands when we have fruit available, so that we can start to work on our hurricane recovery projects. Thanks to all who have recently donated to our GoFundMe! We have raised slightly more than half of the money we need to restore buildings and equipment damaged or destroyed in Maria.
Just a reminder, we are only using one register right now so you may have to wait a few minutes to check out. The line in the farmstand is both a shopping line and a checkout line. Please keep your place in the line to make your selections as you travel through the shed. Those in front of you may have queued up at the gate early in order to get the best selection and they are waiting patiently in the line in the stand until they get to the bin of watermelon or to the flowers or to the herbs or whatever it was they were hoping to pick up at the farmstand. So when you join us and there are people waiting to pay, please wait behind them (or ask if they have finished shopping) to make your selections. Because the farmstand is economically sized, we don’t have additional covered space for people to wait to check out. First come, first served. Believe in abundance!
Lots of sweet salad mix, some cucumbers, very few watermelons, some tomatoes, some cherry tomatoes, Italian basil, cooking greens, a few bunches of extra spicy radishes, seasoning peppers, Serrano peppers, garlic chives, parsley, dill, some bunched onions, scallions, loads of our spicy ginger and turmeric, zinnia flowers, a few papaya and a few pineapple.
We always have some nice native trees looking for a home! We finally got a decent rainshower yesterday, a little more than 3/4 of an inch. And a few follow up showers soaked our laundry, so our plants are happier. Those dragonfruit buds we told you about last week have now bloomed (in the beautiful moonlight) so soon there will be some fruit!
Farmers/artists Luca and Christina will both have several paintings and a video piece in an upcoming show at the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts this summer (TBA), highlighting the unique red breed of cattle developed here on St. Croix, the Senepol. Stay tuned for dates!
if you love the arts like we do, you may have heard that Island Center for Performing Arts sustained serious damage in the hurricane and needs volunteers to help with cleanup and rebuilding. If you have time and can swing by, this Saturday at 2 PM they will be having a work session. Bring tools or just bring yourselves and lend a hand for our young performers! For more information or a wish list of materials they need, call Caribbean Dance School at (340) 778-8824.
ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI 
Good morning,
I feel reprimanded by the shopping protocol spelled out in your post. I am glad to have read it since I never knew it was against the rules to say “ excuse me” and reach through the line to pick up a bag of tomatoes. Now I know it is not okay. Oops! The stay-in-line concept appears straight forward, but the initial outside line inevitably splits once inside the building as shoppers rush to pick up their top priority items, melons and tomatoes in one direction and greens in another. So those who were first may end up further back in the checkout/shopping line (if they have sorted through the tomatoes and others have not). Oh well? Or does being first in line outside mean that one continues to have front-of-the-line rights even if others with simpler needs have queued up for checkout/shopping ahead of them? I truly am hoping for clarification. I clearly appreciate your wonderful produce and don’t want to be an ill-mannered shopper.
I hope you have been getting these showers! Lisa
On Sat, May 5, 2018 at 10:18 AM ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI wrote:
> artfarmllc posted: “Woo hoo!! Crispy greens! We will have salad through > the end of May. So we will be seeing you on Saturdays only, 10am – 12 noon > through the end of this month. After that we will announce ‘irregular’ > pop-up farmstands when we have fruit available, so that w” >
Hey Lisa!
This kind of confusion is exactly why we have really hesitated to create rules for shoppers in the farmstand. You’re absolutely right, if people are polite they should be able to reach through the line and pick up something off the table. There really is not a perfect one-way flow for the layout since the tomatoes are usually at the east end of the structure, basically after you check out. And there is a bit of a bustle when we first open the door when people get excited and don’t want to miss out on favorite items. But we also get the odd complaint here and there that there are some more aggressive customers not being kind and generous in line. I guess I was trying to address those concerns but it really just makes things more confusing. (Plus, those folks causing ruffled feathers seem to not be the ones who read our emails… Murphy’s Law.) There are one or two customers who will really clean out all of an item and not leave some for others, and there are other instances when people unintentionally cut the line or absentmindedly step in front of someone and cause them ire.
Instead of us pleading for a certain type of order in the farmstand, I think people just need to politely inform the other customer if they have been cut in line, as one might do at the bank or post office. We do not have the ability to police the line during a farmstand, nor should that be any more necessary than it would be at Plaza Extra. Of course we have a lot fewer checkout lines and a much tighter space in which people can operate.
I don’t believe I’ve ever had a complaint about you specifically, and in fact most folks who complain do not name the offender. I am afraid that I am causing more problems than solving them by trying to set down rules about shopping, other than suggest that customers should be generous with each other and try to cultivate an attitude of abundance.
In theory the people who waited from early in line outside should have first pick, but logically someone only grabbing a bag of salad greens should be able to check out as soon as they have that item in hand. Asking people to remain in line while they shop means that items are distributed according to how long someone has waited, and it doesn’t reward aggression. But it’s still perhaps not realistic. If you have any better suggestions that don’t involve hiring more staff we are open to considering alternatives to improve things for everyone.
Thank you for your full answer! I wish I did have helpful suggestions, but I don’t. It may just be the nature of limited amounts of wonderful produce and people who all hope to eat it.