This is a broadcast of the emergency tomato warning system. 
Today we may only have two bins of tomatoes available for customers instead of four. We ask that everyone be considerate of your friends and neighbors in line today and perhaps take a few less tomatoes than your heart might desire so that everyone can enjoy a few ARTfarm tomatoes today. (We should be good on cherry tomatoes, it is the slicing tomatoes that have been affected.)
Intense and heavy rains and winds of the last months have had a ‘deferring’ effect on our tomato plants. Gusty winds knocked off flowers, and provided a lot of nutrients and water to the plants. Typically at this time of year Luca is careful not to overwater the tomatoes because it will put them into a plant growth mode instead of a fruit growth mode. But because we could not control the weather, the tomato plants are deferring their fruit setting and they are moving toward vine growth. This means that we will have a lot of tomatoes later in the season if the weather starts to even out. But for the next couple of farmstands, we ask that you show consideration to your fellow customers and share what bounty is available until the crop starts rebounding.
Thanks, and our apologies to Langston Hughes for stealing his beautiful words to talk about something so silly. Have a wonderful day! We’ll see you at three.

Harlem
Harlem
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore-
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over-
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes
ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI 
I bought cherry tomatoes last week and within 3 days they had burst open and rotted. I have been buying them from you for years and never had this happen before. Any thoughts? Thank you.
ps. I took pictures, if you would like to see them. I will be by this afternoon in hopes of getting more.
We are so sorry to hear this. That does seem like an unusual case, as you observed. Luckily we have not had any other customers come forward with this issue. But we would be happy to replace them with another bag and we would appreciate a photo just so we could troubleshoot what might’ve happened.
It’s important for the cherry tomato zip bag to be opened for storage at room temperature. If the bag is closed the natural gases that are emitted from ripe fruit will cause the rest of the bag to overripen very quickly, like bananas in a paper bag. So we recommend not storing the cherries in the closed bag that they are sold in. The other possibility – we are very careful when we bag pints of cherries to make sure each fruit is clean and without injuries. But, with all of the recent rains, we have had to discard an incredible number of cherry tomatoes because they have splits. It is possible that your bag accidentally contained one split cherry tomato, and that could’ve caused the other fruits to ripen very quickly.
Or, maybe aliens from space shot a laser beam in your kitchen window! There could be many reasons, but the solution is to come back soon and get an extra bag on us!
Love, ARTfarm