Hope everyone had a lovely holiday weekend, and Happy Kwaanza! ❤️ Nice to have the Biden family back on St. Croix for the holidays! It’s not as presidential without them! We’re open for scheduled pickups Wednesday, December 28th and Wednesdays going forward through the holidays, soon to add Saturdays. Still splitting up the crowds with pickup times: Click to sign up below for one of 35 ‘health-bubble’ pickup timeslots, includes a base ‘farmshare’ purchase selection for Wednesday starting at 4:30pm! If you missed this signup, there will be another one next week and we’ll be adding Saturdays soon.
Please wear a mask at the pickup table. Instructions below if you’re new. Welcome!
Wednesday afternoon we’ll have bags of sweet salad mix, beautiful bunched white mild radishes with edible green tops, sweet potatoes, small young onions, sweet potato greens for cooking and planting, assorted fresh herbs including cilantro, Italian basil, garlic chives, lemongrass, kefir leaves, baby ginger, baby turmeric, and hopefully our first Mediterranean figs, and a few more bunches of our ridiculously sweet, vitamin C-charged longan (aka dragon eye fruit). A few dozen pastured eggs from Mongoose & Zinnia with holiday artwork!
…and great eco-friendly gifts for the person who has everything!…ARTfarm tomato starts, including heirloom cherry tomato, and black heirloom slicers. Also pineapple slips, small lignum vitae trees.
“It will not be doubted that with reference either to individual or national welfare, agriculture is of primary importance.” – President George Washington
“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most wedded to its liberty and interests, by the most lasting bonds.” – President Thomas Jefferson
“The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt from the Letter to all State Governors on a Uniform Soil Conservation Law (February 26, 1937)
ARTfarm cherry tomatoes soon come, a few have ripened! Looking forward to January for the addition of a tomato bonanza, baby arugula, baby spicy salad mix, sweet corn, Japanese cucumbers, summer squash, assorted cooking greens, and a wide selection of peppers, turnips and pomegranates.
It takes a village. Senepol ranchers don’t retire, they just turn into vegetable farmers! Kiko Gasperi, right, with his son and granddaughter, honored by our local legislature in summer 2022 for his lifetime of achievement in helping establish the Senepol breed, a climate-change-tolerant beef cow unique to St. Croix. Please help us protect and care for our vulnerable ARTfarm family elders this virus-y winter by wearing a mask at the farmstand.
World Central Kitchen project ongoing! We’re still chipping away at ARTfarm’s new World Central Kitchen funded processing center, with lots of banging and clanging, and the help of some fantastic volunteer helpers. This 40 foot container is getting a retrofit as walk-ins and workspace. We’ve had some stops and starts while learning about thermal transfer, and making sure our new walk-in coolers will be fully insulated and maximally efficient.
Brisk farm workouts in peaceful breezy nature available: We’re looking for volunteers (non smokers). Luca could use a hand even if it’s only for two hours at a time, mainly to do final garden bed preparation. This is a great ab and full body workout, mostly standing using rakes and hoes. There is also the mesmerizing sifting of compost with Bob’s incredible electric tumbler, meditative hand weeding, late day transplanting and more. You’ll learn about market gardening, construction and/or food prep. Fast walkers encouraged as there’s always a lot to do. Could convert to part-time employment depending on skills and efficiency.
Farmers Luca and Christina want to take a moment to encourage everyone to support local farmers. If you can’t make it to our farmstand, don’t forget about Sejah Farm, another wonderful mom and pop farm/market that sells their own produce plus lots of produce from all over St. Croix. They have a wide selection and are open more hours and days than we are, and run amazing educational programs too. There is also the Saturday farmers market at the Department of Agriculture grounds where you can buy directly from farmers. And there are many farms with a stand out front.
Remember the best way to support agriculture in the US Virgin Islands is to buy produce directly from farmers.
Hop down to the South Shore and see Farmer Luca!
New to ARTfarm? WELCOME!
During COVID times we switched to a pre-order system instead of open farmstands: Order/reserve at least one farmshare (minimum purchase) ahead on our website; check for your confirmation email so you know your name will be on the list! Please arrive in our parking lot on time but not more than 10 minutes early to prevent traffic jams and longer wait times. We appreciate your cooperation!
At the stand, please bring a mask. We’ll call your name during your timeslot in order of signup. Let the farmer handle the produce for you; Choose extras from first-come-first-served availability; Wait to bag until we’ve totaled up your items; Bring change, cash or check and pen; drop payment in the blue bucket, we will not handle cash.
Please note: With all the flu and viral infections circulating and effects of the “tripledemic”, some of which we have experienced, and Farmer Luca caring for his elderly folks who are immune compromised, we’d appreciate if all customers would help us stay healthy and working, and PLEASE wear a mask and maintain social distancing when interacting with us at the ARTfarm stand this winter season. We shall do the same! We are all one! Grateful for life!!
ARTfarm is a tiny mom and pop family farm who have been growing food with sustainable organic and permaculture methods on St. Croix since 1999. See our FAQs for more info!
Thank you!
Farmshare choices for Wednesday, December 28th, 2022:
We will have 35 timeslots/farmshares available for scheduled pickup Wednesday. You can also order and specify a neighbor, friend or family member to pick up your order and theirs. The minimum order is one farmshare, and you can order more than one farmshare. At the farmstand, you can choose from remaining add-on extras and we’ll total your order. We are chronically understaffed and need to keep farmstand hours brief; add-ons and extras are not currently available independently of a farmshare minimum purchase.
MEDIUM farmshare, $20, will include:
- 2 bags of sweet salad mix
- 1 lb. sweet potatoes
SMALL farmshare, $10, will include:
- 1 bag of sweet salad mix
- 1 fresh herb bunch, your choice
LONGAN LOVER farmshare, $10, will include:
- A bag of 50 longan fruits
Extra Add-Ons (non-reservable)
(Must accompany farmshare purchase, these items cannot be purchased individually. No reservations on these items, they are all first come first served during your pickup slot):
early birds:
- SUGAR APPLES
- fresh Mediterranean FIGS
plenty:
- SWEET POTATOES $4/lb.
- sweet potato COOKING GREENS $3/large bag
- RADISHES with edible tops $3/bunch
- LONGAN fruits, $3/bag of 15ct
- assorted HERBS bunches: $2 each
- baby GINGER/TURMERICS: $3.50/bag ($7 half pound)
- PINEAPPLE slips to grow-ur-own: $2-3 each as sized
- heirloom TOMATO plant starts to grow-ur-own: $4 each
- NATIVE TREES in pots, priced as marked by size/variety
Herb bunch choices for this distribution
(Available as EXTRAS or included in farmshare)
- Italian (Genovese) basil
- Cilantro
- Dill
- Garlic chives
- Kafir lime leaves
- Lemongrass
Please contact us immediately by text and phone at (340) 514-4873 if you have reserved a farmshare and cannot pick it up. Supply is limited, demand is extremely high and someone else will gladly purchase your share, if given enough time to respond. We have limited time for distributions and they are scheduled. Our produce is harvested fresh and needs to go home with you same day. This is an honor system since we are not collecting payment until pickup. We do not have cold storage for uncollected shares.
During this flu and cold “tripledemic” season, due to family members and customers who are immuno-compromised, we’d appreciate everyone wearing masks at ARTfarm during pickups. We went maskless for a while, and hope to loosen restrictions again soon, but for now please help us protect our family and friends!
The signup form will show you a “Thank You” page and send you a confirmation email if submitted successfully. If you don’t find it, please check your spam/junk, inbox tabs, and ‘all mail’ folders for the confirmation email, as this has been a common problem for several customers and with a little searching they typically find it. For more tips, visit our Help page.
Need help with the pre-order signup form? (Click here):
Q: I can’t seem to order more than one item.
A: We have designed our order form not to allow any one customer to purchase all of one extra. Sharing is caring. If you’d like extra of something (beyond what you could reserve through our order system), put it in the comments with your order, and remind us at your pickup time: if we can supply it to you we’ll do our best. If you are in the food service industry and looking for bulk availability, please contact us; our order form is for individuals and families to place a single order for a scheduled pickup.
Q: My order isn’t going through.
- if the automated confirmation email is not immediately found, check your spam folder and the ‘all mail’ folder
- make sure all required fields are filled/selected
- just try again
- use a cellular device (smartphone or tablet) that isn’t using WiFi internet
- restart your browser/device
- clear your cache and cookies in your browser/device
- reboot your router (unplug it for a minute and plug in again)
- visit our “help” page for additional tips
Q: The form says I didn’t enter my email, but I did.
Our pre-order form requires everyone to type their email in twice, and makes sure the two match exactly. We had a lot of customers in such a rush to get their order in that they’d spell their own email incorrectly and then complain that they could not find the confirmation email. Our ‘type it in twice’ system ensures that you’ll find any email mistakes before you submit the pre-order form.
Q: I ordered before, but I’m not getting your emails.
Our pre-order form does NOT automatically sign you up for an ARTfarm email subscription. Do that HERE!
ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI 