ARTfarm Winter Roots Saturday! 10am – 12noon

This Saturday we’re open 10am – 12 noon. We have lots of beautiful root vegetables, herbs, cooking greens and pumpkins for your winter menu; with refreshing, juicy summery watermelon, ripe tomatoes and baby salad greens just to remind you you’re in the tropics! Here’s the full list (and a yummy drink idea from a friend at the end):

Starting at 10am down the South Shore we’ll have lots of tomatoes, lots and lots of cherry tomatoes, teen spicy salad mix, teen arugula, sweet salad mix, lots of various lettuce heads including large romaine type, just a few cucumbers, seasoning peppers, green bell peppers, a few Serano peppers, red and yellow-fleshed watermelons, lots of winter squash, various varieties. Farmer Luca’s favorite Tahitian pumpkin is now ready, also lots of large butternut winter squash sliced in smaller portions.

Baby carrots, onions, radishes, beets, lots of various cooking greens including three kinds of kales, dandelion greens, cilantro, dill, parsley, Italian basil, Thai basil, lemon basil, garlic chives, holy basil, sage, thyme, lemongrass, lots of baby ginger, lots of baby turmeric (which freezes beautifully and then is handy and easy to microplane into whatever dish you’re cooking), lots of colorful zinnia flowers, and fresh figs. We will have two cash registers set up for speedier service!

Amaranta’s Winter Anti-Ick Herbal Tea

Are you feeling icky and jacked? This rooty brew will soothe the savage icky beast within. (Probably can’t say the same for the ones without.)

A thumb or more fresh grated turmeric

A thumb or more fresh grated ginger

Couple pinches black pepper (activates beneficial things in turmeric)

Three quarts water

A splash of 1/2 & 1/2 (or non-dairy substitute)

2 tsp honey

Bring water to a boil. Add ginger and turmeric. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Pour into cup(s), add 1/2 & 1/2 or whatever non-dairy thing you want, and honey. Stir. Sip. Be happier than you were 20 minutes prior.

ARTfarmers make this adding a bunch of fresh lemongrass in the water. Heavenly warm or cold. And makes your house smell amazing, this.

Farmer Resolutions for 2018! Saturday 10am – 12 noon!

We resolve to get off the streets in 2018!! We will be hosting everyone back in our farmstand building on Saturday! We resolve to rebuild and make things better, including TWO CHECKOUT LINES tomorrow to get the line speeding quickly through! (But in the meantime, please watch your step as you walk through our construction zone!) Luca wants you to know that he resolves to grow more watermelon! That is a win-win as long as all of you resolve to eat more of it!

For Saturday: did we say BABY SPICY SALAD MIX? ARUGULA?!! Yes, yes we did say that. We will have lots of tomatoes, some heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, sweet salad mix, baby arugula, baby spicy salad mix, lots of lettuce heads, cucumbers, sweet bell peppers, a few seasoning peppers, lots of assorted cooking greens including the kale trio of Ethiopian, dinosaur and purple, broccoli leaves, collard greens, dandelion greens; onions, baby carrots, pink radishes, a few beets, lots of baby ginger and baby turmeric, Italian basil, lemon basil, Thai basil, holy basil, cilantro, parsley, dill, lemongrass, garlic chives, sage, lots of assorted butternut squash, a few watermelons, a few Sakata melons, lots of figs, and lots of vibrant zinnia flowers! We’ve got beautiful raw local honey from Errol’s bees, too!

Just a reminder, our farmstand policy (like most retail stores) is first come first serve. We have been receiving a flurry of requests from different customers recently to hold pre-orders from the farmstand (a service even Plaza Extra does not provide). We wish we could be so accommodating but we simply cannot. We do not do this.

The natural farmstand etiquette that has developed over the years is basically a buffet line. Customers progress in a line (which often forms up to half an hour before our opening time) which winds past all the tables of produce, and choose from what is available. It is permissible for a customer to shop for themselves and also for a friend or neighbor. (This is highly recommended for customers who cannot make it to the farmstand on time.) We do not police the line, it is a self-enforcing honor system.

We love our farming life and we love our customers. We do our best to accommodate everyone. But please remember, despite the diversity and beauty of our sustainably grown mountains of produce you see on Saturday mornings at 10 AM, we are not Whole Foods! 😉 We are a tiny family operation with very long hours, always busy, working, and understaffed so please consider your request — and see if you can work with a friend, colleague or neighbor to come up with a strategy to get the items you need without adding to our long long list of things we need to do. Thank you for your compassion. And thank you for loving our produce.

More updates to come soon on our Hurricane Maria recovery efforts, the deal with GoFundMe, our status with SBA and other fun stuff. No electrical current yet at the farm but we hear Broadband VI is starting work on restoring our tower! Stay tuned!

Happy New Year, everyone! Let’s make this year count!

Pole-R Vortex at ARTfarm!

The South Shore is lined with new telephone poles! Amazingly tall! Soon to be festooned with wires, we hear. Transformers…next year!

Saturday December 30th we will have sweet salad mix, lots of cherry tomatoes, lots of slicing tomatoes, a few heirlooms, green bell peppers, a few seasoning and serrano peppers, dandelion greens, lots of cooking greens including kale, lettuce heads, a few fewer watermelons, Sakata melons, lots of sweet Mediterranean figs, tons of cucumbers, butternut squash, baby carrots, radishes, a few beets, onions, garlic chives, Italian basil, dill, parsley, holy basil, a few bunches of cilantro, a few bunches of mint, recao (culantro), lemongrass, baby ginger, baby turmeric, and native trees available for sale! See you next year, we wish a prosperous and peaceful 2018 to all!

Farmer Roi harvests sunflower seeds to feed our heritage poultry. We intended to harvest birds this Thanksgiving but with the hurricanes causing lack of refrigeration and poultry feed in short supply, unfortunately it did not happen for the holidays this year. We will do pre-orders and harvest when we have enough folks interested so please let us know if you would like us to put you on the list!

EMF-Free ARTfarm Open Saturday 10am-12noon!

These heirloom yellow fleshed watermelons are outrageous! We are also having a bumper crop of figs after a couple years of not so great production. We think the figs like the full water tables we are experiencing after the flooding Hurricane Maria rains!

We may not have current, but we are far from ‘powerless’! Bounty begins for the season! Sweet salad mix, red and green leaf lettuce heads, lots of slicing tomatoes, a few heirloom tomatoes, lots of cherry tomatoes, lots of fresh crunchy sweet just-picked cucumbers, lots of green bell peppers, baby ginger, baby turmeric, baby carrots, onions, various plethora of cooking greens, two kinds of butternut squash, radishes, Italian basil, garlic chives, cilantro, dill, parsley, holy basil, lemongrass, red fleshed watermelon, Sakata sweet melons, and lots of figs!

We had a fantastic farmstand last Saturday. With the customer entrance area under repair, we are still setting up tables in the parking lot. We started with a full pickup bed of produce, and everything was gone except for a few cucumbers by the end. It seems like just about every one of our familiar customers stopped by (including several chefs!), thank you so much everyone! It gives us such a lift to see that people appreciate our efforts. We have suddenly raised over $20,000 (thanks to one large anonymous donor!!!) on our GoFundMe campaign (total goal of $23,000) and are moving ahead with rebuilding our seedling house, and seeking help designing an off grid power system for the farm refrigeration units.

We still have not gotten electricity back on the South Shore. We are guessing it might be spring before we get our grid power restored here at the far end of feeder 3A. We have frankly been enjoying the starry skies at night without the sodium-vapor glare of the streetlights. If anyone with their current restored has extra solar lights they are willing to pass on, our farm workers could use them so they can stop stubbing their toes on the furniture at night.

Speaking of farmworkers, Roi is back! We were so happy to have our familiar friend return. He will be here for a month or two working on restoring gates and fences that were damaged in the hurricane.

We have also welcomed newcomer Todd to the farm this winter. He is a vegan farmer with a big heart from Boulder Colorado who wanted to come down and offer some hurricane relief volunteer work. He loves St. Croix’s reggae music and is excited to learn about subtropical farming techniques!