ARTfarm on St. Croix, USVI

The farm has turned a dramatic and crispy golden color. The soil has deep cracks and fissures, and anything not on regular irrigation is drying out immediately. We still have not received a good soaking on the South Shore. The mango trees are flowering, but will need water to set fruit. So keep doing the rain dance for some April showers still to come at the ARTfarm!The lettuce is really suffering from the dry soil. The heads are small and the fire ants are moving in. But lucky you, Luca saved up the harvest until Friday, so there will be Saturday salad mix! Saturday farmstand: sweet salad mix, arugula salad mix, some cucumbers, some slicer and heirloom tomatoes, lots and lots of cherry tomatoes, Italian basil, garlic chives, parsley, dill, cilantro, nice seasoning peppers and Serrano peppers, radishes, a few bunches of carrots, a few watermelons, hopefully a few figs, lots of ginger and turmeric, and zinnia flowers.

We’ll be open a few more Saturdays until we run out of either food or customers!

Pick a PEPPA!! This will be our last Wednesday farmstand for the season. We will continue to be open Saturday mornings, 10 AM – 12 noon.

Todd from Colorado is headed back to the states this week after spending four months working here, enjoying Ha’Penny beach, and learning about Caribbean farming and culture. We have enjoyed his positive spirit. He’s been a particularly mighty mulcher, composter, papaya planter, bed weeder, and ginger and turmeric harvester. He’s been bitten by centipedes and stung by jacks and bees, but maintained his determination to farm in the subtropics. Good luck on your journey, Todd!

Wednesday’s harvest list: We will have lots of cherry tomatoes, good amounts of slicing tomatoes and heirloom tomatoes, some cucumbers assorted types, seasoning peppers, Serrano peppers, Italian basil, garlic chives, dill, scallions, parsley, lots and lots of ginger and turmeric, radishes, a few watermelons, zinnias, one pineapple and a few bags of figs.

Thanks everyone for your continued support! We will be taking a much needed break soon to work on rebuilding and battening down for the 2018 storm season!

Luca’s Pumpkin Hot Sauce

ARTfarm is awash in hot sauce ingredients, including pumpkin, beautiful hot peppers and mild but smoky seasoning peppers right now. The dry weather makes all our peppers and pumpkins and tomatoes even more rich in flavor. We will have plenty of peppers at the farmstand if you want to experiment with a homemade hot sauce! A bottle of this potion makes a thoughtful gift for the spicy people in your life! This recipe makes a flavorful and hot but sweet sauce that is piquant but not overwhelmed by excessive Scovilles. We poured this thick orange sauce liberally over salmon balls and salad the other night like a dressing and it was heavenly, attractive and anti-inflammatory, too! This batch made about 2+ quart jars (8 cups) of pumpkin-orange hot sauce.

Ingredients:

2 cups Thai pumpkin cubed (unpeeled)

2 cups hot and not-hot peppers combined to taste, washed and de-stemmed, coarsely chopped but with skin & seeds included. We used 25 hot Serranos, 15 various not-hot seasoning peppers, 10 smoky poblano peppers.

4 small onions, peeled and coarsely chopped

2 medium tomatoes, coarsely chopped

About a thumb each of fresh turmeric and ginger, grated

Three cloves fresh garlic, crushed peeled and chopped

Tablespoon salt

3/4 cup (or more to taste) Apple cider vinegar

1 cup water

3 Tablespoons local raw honey

2 Tablespoons coconut oil

Directions:

1. Heat up a heavy-bottomed large skillet. Sauté the cumin seed, chopped garlic, and grated turmeric and ginger in hot coconut oil until fragrant/garlic begins to brown.

2. Add all of the chopped vegetables and sauté for an additional five minutes, stirring often.

3. Pour in the water and vinegar. Add honey and salt. Stir to combine. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

4. Allow mixture to cool, then purée in a blender until smooth. Bottle and refrigerate, or follow your favorite canning instructions and preserve it!

Extreme dry weather plus the prediction of another active storm season for fall 2018, continues to push us into a much needed early ‘summer’ break. Many thanks to the generous recent donors to our fundraising efforts for hurricane recovery! You can take a look at our fundraising campaign progress at GoFundMe.com/artfarmllc (but we encourage everyone to donate offline by sending or dropping off a check, as your donation will go further by avoiding processing fees!) We are working on the monoprint artwork for our donors of $250 or more and will be sending those out before the school year is over!

Saturday farmstand harvest list: sweet salad mix, baby arugula, good amounts of tomatoes and heirloom tomatoes, lots of cherry tomatoes, assorted cucumbers, lots of beautiful seasoning peppers, lots of serrano peppers, Italian basil, parsley, garlic chives, dill, lots of ginger and turmeric, radishes, carrots, lots of scallions, some watermelon, turkey eggs and chicken eggs, and zinnia flowers. We also have young drought resistant native trees for sale for landscaping, mostly $15-50, and potted rosemary plants for sale.

This coming Wednesday will be our last Wednesday farmstand for a while. We will continue Saturdays for another few weeks and then we will hold pop-up farmstands occasionally when we have more than we can eat. We will continue to have bulk amounts of ginger available by pre-order, and will be harvesting some heritage turkeys soon by pre-order. Pineapples are getting bigger on the plants, and papayas are going to come ripe in another month. While the watermelon vines are suffering now, we do anticipate another harvest in a month or so after we close “for the season.” We are also hoping for a harvest from our recovering dragonfruit vines later in the summer. So, stay tuned for fruity pop-ups! And of course we still have a few more farmstands left this season.

Still life with still life and hot sauce. Digital photograph, (C) ARTfarm 2018 😉