Smile and say “season”! We are back to weekly (socially distanced) farmstands: ARTfarm will be open every Wednesday afternoon 4:30–5:30pm. For now these will be first-come, first-served socially distanced distributions, but we may revert to the online pre-order system and longer open hours, as the season gets underway and crowd sizes increase. Your feedback is always welcomed.

Farmer Luca is finally smiling underneath his COVID mask, because we have finally gotten a few early morning rain showers on the farm this week. It hasn’t exactly replenished our reservoirs, but it is a reprieve from the drought conditions that South Shore farmers have been experiencing this season.

Wednesday 12/8/21, come see Farmer Luca in the breezy parking lot. He’ll have plenty of fresh sweet salad mix, lots of radishes and garlic chives, turmeric, and zinnia flowers! Early birds will also get pick of: dragonfruit, yellow summer squash, cilantro, dill, baby bok Choi, turnips, baby ginger (super thin skin no fibers), Thai basil, lemongrass, green hot chili peppers, and eggs from Mongoose&Zinnia (just one or two cartons, as chickens island-wide have been on a laying strike during the extra warm autumn months). And…

Looking to grow some food at home? Farmer Luca will have a few extra tomato slips ready for transplanting into your garden or container: Black plum, Black cherry, Hawaiian slicer, Cherokee green varieties. We’ll also have pineapple slips available.

Extra thanks and shout out to super customer Jennifer Larkum for her sharp eyes and memory, she was able to connect a stray cat that showed up on the farm with its relieved owner via a several-weeks-old Facebook missing pet post. Awesome detective work! PSA: Please, please bring lost, found or unwanted pets to a vet clinic or the animal shelter. Do NOT drop animals at a farm, it is an unsafe environment for them and stray animals cost the farmers a lot of time. They will wind up at the shelter anyway, so save us the trip please!

The painting above is a new original artwork soon to be added to the current exhibition, “Small Life” showing at Café Christine Tues-Fri 10am-2:30pm, now through December 26th. Please visit the Café in Christiansted over this holiday time and enjoy this ARTfarm production!

Love, ARTfarmers