Saturday morning’s farmstand will include microgreens, pineapples, yummy garlic chives, cooling thai basil and lemongrass. We’ll have local honey, honey vinegar, luscious buttery mangoes, chocolates from Sweetface and Feel I’s coconut-based local fruit ice creams, including our family’s favorite flavor, hot pink Beet Ginger.
A Buff and a Toulouse goose wander in one of ARTfarm's fallow summer gardens, munching on basil and hot peppers.
The recent rains have sent the farm into summer hibernation a few weeks early, and Farmer Luca and new employee Tucker are busy pulling out old plants and mulching down the gardens for a well deserved rest between growing seasons. The geese have been given free rein in the back garden and are happily eating weeds, grass, basil and pounds and pounds of hot peppers.
Last night we attended the opening of Nadine Donath‘s exhibition of cyanotype prints, “Not Here Either”, at Machete Machete Gallery, during the last Art Thursday event of the 2010-2011 season.
Donath’s dozens of mysterious, watery ‘photograms’ in hundreds of shades of cobalt blue, were created with tiny snippets of plants and trees from around the ARTfarm and nearby pastures. Viewing the work was oddly personal, it seemed like a family photo album to us.
Donath, a native of Berlin and resident of New York City, has been here on St. Croix for a month. As an artist in residence at Thomas Shelley’s Machete Machete Gallery, she has been producing her own work, giving a workshop on cyanotype printing, and just learning about and enjoying the microcosm of St. Croix.
We purchased two prints. At $100 each, you’d do well to purchase four or six of these beautiful little images and frame them together as a little visual poem of the wilds of St. Croix. Donath heads off the rock this Saturday, but the show hangs through July. Get yourself over to Machete Machete on Company Street on your lunch hour or for one of their hipster movie nights and enjoy this cool blue show.
We are starting new shorter hours on Wednesday afternoons, as the summer approaches and we have a limited supply of greens on hand. Today’s farmstand features microgreens, mangoes, garlic chives, basil, kangkong (spinach), chocolates and honey!
Why no salad mix? The rain over the last month has destroyed the last few lettuce beds and the last of our tomato plants, so the sweet and spicy mixes we make with larger lettuces, and the tomatoes, will be but a fond memory until a few months from now. ‘Tis the season for mangoes, treating yourself to our tender baby and micro greens, and discovering the joys of hummus made with a delicious bunch of garlic chives blended in. Cool, refreshing summer treats! Feel I’s delicious ice cream will soon also return to the stand, we’ve been promised Beet Ginger for Saturday!
Chef Thomas Shelley chops fresh veggies from the gardens around him while Nadine Donath plates up the first course.
The ‘Farm-to-Table’ concept was first popularized in the US in the 1990s in restaurants in Northern California, in a movement led by celebrity Chef Alice Waters among others. The idea, now embraced by many chefs, is to create a seasonal menu and cuisine that is based on foods that are fresh and currently available from local fields of local farms. Followers of this type of cuisine are often called ‘locavores’. Our ARTfarm-to-Table dinners bring the chefs and guests right onto the farm, featuring ingredients grown within 600 yards of the spot where you’re sitting down to enjoy them. There is a wonderful energy in the experience of fine dining in the midst of a pineapple grove.
Saturday evening, May 28th 2011, ARTfarm hosted our first ARTfarm-to-Table dinner for nine guests. The ombitalented Chef/Artist/Musician/Gallery Owner Thomas Shelley prepared a six course meal for the maiden voyage, assisted by artists Alisha Westerman and Nadine Donath.
Yum! A six-course meal at ARTfarm made from ingredients grown in the gardens all around your table.ARTfarm-to-Table dinners can accommodate 24 or more guests.
ANTIPASTI Pineapple–Mango Salsa over Homemade Sage & Rosemary Flatbread Local Lamb Sliders over Grilled Eggplant and Homemade Bruschetta topped with Caramelized Onions
PRIMO Cold Cucumber and Dill Soup topped with Farm Fresh Tomatoes
SECONDO Farm Salad with Roasted Carrots and Beets
CONTORNO Homemade Pumpkin Ravioli with Sauteed Chicory
DOLCE Alisha’s Birthday Chocolate Truffle Cake with a Spicy Molasses Crust
The crowd was very happy!
Lemongrass (‘fevergrass’) bush tea over ice was a lovely refreshment for a hot night, and Chef Thomas generously included his white-hot Garlic and Tejaswani Indian Hot Pepper Oil on the table for those brave enough to try it.
Our next ARTfarm-to-Table Dinner will most likely take place in early fall 2011, as our gardens come out of the summer resting period and begin to produce again. Please let us know if you’d like to be on a guest list for upcoming farm dinners at ARTfarm!
ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI 